What the Internet Means (27SEP2011)

   Some things are born big, and people know right away it will affect their lives. Others start small, and only in retrospect do we realise they were the beginning of something important. The internet is about midway between those two: even as it became widely available, we knew it was something exciting and that it would change the world. On the other hand, I don’t think people really appreciate just how revolutionary it is, not even those who like to use that very adjective in their appraisals. We’ve only just begun to tap its possibilities, and the internet has already changed so many things so much in so many ways so quickly. I sincerely believe its importance is comparable to that of Gutenberg’s printing press. First of all, it is the newest means of communication in a long evolutionary line.

    Many thousands of years ago, people learned to talk, which allowed them to express themselves more accurately and transmit their knowledge to their peers; later, people learned to read and write, which faithfully preserved their thoughts in a way that could easily outlive their authors and travel farther than they ever did. The printing press made duplication much faster, and gradually more affordable, which boosted the variety and number of books, and brought on the development of widely available newspapers and magazines. Photographs, sound recording and movies came along, magical gimmicks which could conjure up the shadow of a fleeting moment, and make it possible for us to see and hear things that happened long ago and far away, almost as if we’d witnessed them ourselves. The telegraph and the radio made information and entertainment travel far and instantly: for the first time, people who were not present at the site where something was happening could learn about an event or enjoy a performance as it was taking place. Television was the next step, bringing real-time audio and video into our very homes.

    And now, the internet. Ever-growing amounts of information from every angle of everything, and it’s all moving in all directions. It is also more democratic and interactive than any of its predecessors: only a few selected works would be published as books, only chosen individuals would write for newspapers and magazines. Only a handful of people performed on radio or television. Even with their around-the-clock broadcasts, it would not be reasonable to allow each person to take part in the process. And all of these had to undergo the scrutiny of censorship or, at least, considerations about their good taste & mass appeal. The most you could aspire to in terms of interaction was to be a guest or audience member on a show, or maybe to buy your own vcr or videogame.
   But anybody can take part in the internet. And anyone can access everyone’s texts, audio or video, for better and for worse. “Virtual” and “digital” are words that came to be used very often in the past 20 years, growing in importance around the same time the internet slowly started to make its way into the homes of people. After all, digital technology has made it possible to store those articles in a virtual form. It still uses a physical platform, much like our thoughts in our brain, but the actual content is virtually eternal, incorruptible, weightless; and it can be instantly copied and sent anywhere. Any kind of censorship or control over undesirable or illegal material has never been so difficult. This, too, for better and for worse.

Even though the internet is regarded as a blessing, we also know it has, as any human endeavour, its flaws.

    At present, the most discussed issue concerning the internet is piracy. We’ve all been conditioned to believe it's wrong for people to copy and share files they don't own the legal rights to, so how do we keep them from doing so? In a way, I understand that concern. Many different industries have been built around what could be called “content management”. Their business was based on their ability to control and decide who had access to what content, and for how much. File sharing on the internet has broken their monopoly. This isn’t all bad, as most of those companies had an increase in profits as their only goal when they made decisions. But I’m afraid it’s also a difficult time for those distributors who were aware of their social role, and struggled to preserve and make available material they believed was either relevant or quality entertainment, mostly under minute profit margins.

    As for the artists and professionals involved, they should be able to make a living out of their work. They should not be in a position of inferiority, depending on the decisions of those who control the means of distribution. They should get most of the profit, which is not usually the case. My instinct tells me that all works of art are the common property of mankind. All of us should be able to access them. On the other hand, I am aware of the fact they don’t spontaneously burst into existence, they don’t just grow on trees. There is a lot of preparation involved in bringing those works to the public’s attention. Filesharing over the internet cannot be stopped, however, so companies should try to learn from what happened 30 years ago when similar issues were brought up as vhs became popular. They must adapt to survive. As the saying goes, “If you can’t beat them, join them”. The best way to do that, truth be told, is not very clear yet. We’re all still trying to balance that equation.

Just to give you very small, mundane examples of how different things are now, I’ll mention some of the changes I’ve experienced in the way you do your homework and watch movies.

    As I grew up in the late 1980’s and 1990’s, if a teacher told you to do research, you’d go to your school library or, if the topic was more demanding, your local public library, where you’d have access to books that were anywhere from a few years to decades old. You’d hand-copy the text you thought was important, or, if you were lucky , you could make photocopies of whole pages, and then edit the text. You’d finally hand your teacher your hand-written copy of the final version. Any pictures would have to be from mostly black and white photocopies, cut from old magazines you had, or even your own handy work. Nowadays, in the comfort of your own home, you have access to a wealth of information no single library could hold. You can find details even on smaller events or people, not covered in most works, and it is completely up-to-date, possibly including different information and opinions, and pictures from different angles and sources, of events that took place on the same day as you were doing your homework. You simply use the “copy” and “paste” commands to grab what you want, edit it in a very versatile program that will give you a beautiful, clean copy that has even been automatically checked for grammar and spelling mistakes, and then you can print out the result, something that a mere 10 years earlier could only be seen as the work of a skilled professional for a magazine.

    As for movies, apart from experiments like 8mm film that were never really quite adequate for mass market consumption, the 1980’s saw the growth of the VHS VCR system, the first true home video technology to catch on. I was a huge fan of movies growing up in that period, and a vcr was the object of my desire. In 1991 I was finally able to acquire my first vhs video deck, and I still have fond memories of the system. Unfortunately, what you mostly got were mainstream movies. No doubt having those was a joy, but some of us also wanted to watch things from outside the US-and-Major-European-Producers axis. We wanted documentaries and old tv shows, and also works released in the early, silent years of the medium. Only a handful of those were available, usually from damaged prints, and not many stores would take a chance on them as they didn’t appeal to most. Throughout the 1990’s, you really had to go to many different rental stores so that you might happen across any rarities which one of them might be carrying.

    Skip 10 years. When the digital format of the DVD took over, I was slow to adapt. Yes, the picture was visibly sharper. Yes, it was easier to manipulate, operate and store, cheaper, smaller and lighter, more durable and resistant. But what really did the trick for me was that they were releasing titles that had never been available before. New restorations from the best available sources, and bonus features on the making and impact of those works. You’d still have some of the problems VHS had as for availability of some titles in some places, but even that was solved in time. The internet made it very easy to order dvd’s, even from foreign countries. Eventually, you’d be able to download what you wanted, either legally or not. I can now find movies that are a hundred years old, titles I’ve read about and have wanted to watch for over 20 years, and they’re literally only one click away. I am basically against piracy, but how can I feel guilty downloading titles that have not been made reasonably available before?

    Over the next decades, people will ask my generation how life was before the internet, just as I probed my grandparents trying to understand how they could manage before television. In the distant future, this text may even become an interesting testimony from someone who saw this revolution as it was happening. Right now, the internet is not as available, stable or fast as it is going to be. But then, there are still illiterate people in the world. What is really exciting is the thought that there is a new thing happening, that it is bound to grow bigger and better, and that we will get to see some of that. I used to lament the generation I had been born to, as I couldn’t see anything truly important or even entertaining taking place. The internet has changed all that.