It's arguably the most important change in recent history, on-par with manufacturing, and there's no real telling what all of the social effects are going to be.
Like, everything else aside. I'm old enough to remember a good bit of things before the 'net really kicked in, and been around people much of my life that had a good chunk of their lives pass before the internet came about at all.
It's a net positive. It's a net fucking positive. It's a
massive fucking net positive. My eyes feel like they want to gouge out parts of my skull right now, so putting this in better words probably isn't going to happen all that effectively.
But, like. I've said it before. I'll say it again. The past was
shit.
It was shit. Every aspect that's piss poor about the 'net was just as bad or worse before it, just more localized, with less choice and information access involved, and so on. People had their head stuck up the ass of social interaction pre-net, too, they just did it within the context of their town/neighborhood/etc. People wasted free time doing sod all (drinking was always fun!) pre-net, it's just the amount they could
do with it was less, due to lack of ability to communicate, coordinate, check information about X, Y, or Z, and so on.
Every aspect of the creative arts were comparatively hobbled; there is currently literally
no part of the creative sphere of human efforts that has not seen quantitative, and generally qualitative as well, improvement. Literally none. Music, writing, drawn arts, performance, bloody everything. Over the course of around the 90s all that shit basically exploded. We're currently seeing processes in the development of genres and styles that would have taken decades or
centuries pre-net, because there is basically nothing better for an artist of any stripe than having what amounts to the near total of their respective interest at their fingertips, and nothing better for a field of any stripe than having what amounts to the near total of their techniques and whatnot at the fingertips of people
interested in them. What would have taken days, weeks, and a bucketload of cash just to find (initial instructions, someone willing to teach, examples or points of inspiration, partners for one project or another, and so on) now can take minutes or hours, and cost nothing but the time and bandwidth. Even with whatever inefficiencies or whathaveyou it introduces, the gains outweigh them to the point it's almost farcical. I've talked with art folks that would very much very literally kill to keep the state of things in that area from rolling back four or five decades.
Every aspect of the productive aspects of personal and societal output were hobbled. The ability to reach out to other people doing the same thing, share methodology, arrange to split projects, figure out where resource X, Y, or Z is and how to best get it, etc., has increased by something approaching an order or two of magnitude. People
can spend a week or two with their head up their own ass, because half the time they're still getting shit done faster than they would have when it would have otherwise taken days or weeks just for a request or some shit to reach its recipient to begin with, never mind anything come of it.
The information bubbles were harder to pop, the vitriol more local and you damn sure better believe no nicer for it -- just quieter at the best -- just basically bloody everything was worse, and everything it had that
wasn't is
still here. Half the time having your head up the ass of social media 9/10ths of your time still has the remaining 1/10th do more than you would have done with it in the full 10/10ths a half century ago 'cause you bloody
couldn't do things with chunks of it then, the infrastructure to enable it on an information and communication level didn't
exist. Every problem the damned internet causes is either less than it was previously, such that it doesn't actually remove whatever came before it that mitigated the problem, opens up several times the options that previously existed to deal with it, or about a half-dozen things beside.
Just... seriously. I would say with very,
very little hesitation that the internet, for all its associated issues, is straight up the most important thing our species has done to date, bar
none. Best thing, too, relatively, though there's a good chunk of other things that're closer to it on that front. It's a communicative paradigm shift for a social species that has its best performance come out when collaborating, and has even individual efforts improve when access to certain breakpoints of information. Goddamn thing is a force multiplier for humanity like we've never
seen before, and it's just getting started. Its problems are problems relative to itself and what it enables, and often enough gains from yesteryear
anyway. A century ago this shit would have been more magic than just about anything else we can do. The internet has made goddamn wizards of all of us.
a. your left or right eye is glued shut for the entire day and the index+middle fingers of the opposite hand are glued together for the same period
or
b. you can not make use of any device with an internet connection or log into your user accounts on any devices you own
What seems more awful?
B, no doubt, no hesitation. For me it's less like an eye or a few fingers than it is an arm or a leg. As y'say, it's like part of your brain is missing, and as y'note, it's because part of it functionally
is, now that many of us are effectively cyborgs storing part of our cognitive functions in external hardware.
which we do because just good goddamn we built the crap to take over that stuff for a reason, and the reason is it's a lot better, or at the absolute least a lot more consistent, at whatever it is than we are otherwise
I don't think we explicitly need an attack on civil rights sitting down town to keep a connection to the past.