The Internet's Original Sin

[securitybreach]

Ron Carlson’s short story “What We Wanted To Do” takes the form of an apology from a villager who failed to protect his comrades from marauding Visigoths. It begins:

 

What we wanted to do was spill boiling oil onto the heads of our enemies as they attempted to bang down the gates of our village. But as everyone now knows, we had some problems, primarily technical problems, that prevented us from doing what we wanted to do the way we had hoped to do it. What we’re asking for today is another chance.

 

There's little suspense in the story -- the disastrous outcome is obvious from the first paragraph -- but it works because of the poignancy of the apology. All of us have screwed up situations in our lives so badly that we've been forced to explain our actions by reminding everyone of our good intentions. It's obvious now that what we did was a fiasco, so let me remind you that what we wanted to do was something brave and noble.

 

The fiasco I want to talk about is the World Wide Web, specifically, the advertising-supported, “free as in beer” constellation of social networks, services, and content that represents so much of the present day web industry. I've been thinking of this world, one I've worked in for over 20 years, as a fiasco since reading a lecture by Maciej Cegowski, delivered at the Beyond Tellerrand web design conference. Cegowski is an important and influential programmer and an enviably talented writer. His talk is a patient explanation of how we've ended up with surveillance as the default, if not sole, internet business mode.....

http://www.theatlant...nal-sin/376041/