A recent Facebook post

I mentioned to Jason today that one thing I've noticed about getting older is seeing new generations repeatedly discover the past as history when I lived it as, well, life. As I did in my own time, as it happens.

Anyway. The Internet. I do love it. I would not have the life I have or most of my friends without it, for one. You can certainly use it to spiral into conspiracy theories if you wish, but you can choose instead to, say, watch someone listen willingly to one of your favorite songs and fall in love with it. I choose the latter. and the response I wrote to a couple comments from a male hometown acquaintance and erstwhile bookstore employee:

My mother used to tell us about a college lesson where she learned "the jungle is neutral", and she had the inspiration that the universe is neutral. I tend to apply that a lot.

The internet is a creation of and a tool of humans. I don't consider it to have an "innocent" surface - there's plenty of crap right on the surface. I was thinking along the lines of QAnon, and they are not far from the things Mickey (a nom de Internet, by the way) pointed out, also a concerning aspect of how humans use the Internet. Sex trafficking and other trafficking of people certainly do exist, online and off. I know I've tried to find some accurate information about the breadth and scope of those things over the years, and as yet I have not found much that gives clear data; I have seen a great many hyperbolic claims geared to stirring emotions that rarely show me any hard facts. I know I'd like to be able to discuss the issues with real-world information, because that would be the best way to approach real-world solutions.

This is part of how the Internet is just part of how people interact, though: I have seen people share warnings about someone sketchy almost snatching women from parking lots. Because I was around before the Internet, I remember those things from before there was an online way to share them, which helps me give a cynical eye to them. What the Internet made easier, actually, was my ability to search for facts about such warnings, to see if they have any grain of truth to them (spoiler: they don't), rather than just suspecting that vague, unsourced warnings about fears come to life are just something people put out there.

I've often said I wished people came out of school with critical thinking skills. For me, I try to apply those skills in part by observing my own visceral reactions and questioning them: is this rational? Do I know the facts? Am I being trolled? In a world that relies heavily on electronic communication, there are many, many security issues to be concerned about - that's not about the Internet, that's about people who wish to grift and scam and steal having a new field to work in with new tools. It's certainly worth paying attention to what those are, and keeping a skeptical stance - just as one should when receiving a phone call, or when being asked for money in person (recently here, a pair of people were caught who had been attending public events claiming to be collecting cash for a local food bank: they collected cash, for themselves).

I will say I personally think there are a lot of scare stories about AI out there that are extremely puffed up - it seems to me to be an entertaining distraction from thinking about hard things, like climate change and far-right fascist trends, especially those taking place close to home on school boards and other local government. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes - thanks for making me take a look at their webpages (at my fingertips! thanks, internet) to confirm - is focused mainly on financial and workplace issues, with the use of AI being one element of many. That concern seems, reasonably, to be spurred by the ongoing experience of having expanding media platforms being used without compensating the workers involved properly.

I certainly agree with you that we ought to be aware of how this technology can be used for ill, and we should expect the industries involved to be actively engaged with preventing misuse, as well as expect law enforcement agencies to keep on the cutting edge, but we should be aware that the bottom line is human behavior - including our tendency to believe we are more rational and more resistant to influence than we often are. That's we as in me, too, which is why I do a lot of fact-checking on myself, by the way.

I stand by my appreciation of the ways in which humans use the Internet to form connection and build community with each other. Some people hold firmly that the Internet isolates individuals, which puzzles me, when I, like so many others, find so many ways to connect in positive ways with so many people, friends and strangers. It's certainly not the same experience for every person, but myriad avenues of engagement exist online, however we choose to use them.