By David Byrne New York, NY, USA (March 24, 2014)
Disillusionment with the Internet is at an all-time high thanks to the snooping of NSA agents, corporate algorithms and cyber thieves. What would a world without the web look like? David Byrne imagines a society that has gone totally offline—if only to suggest what a truly secure online life might look like.
Still from Tabor Robak’s real-time 3D environment Exo, 2012. Courtesy of Team Gallery.
Still from Tabor Robak’s real-time 3D environment Exo, 2012. Courtesy of Team Gallery.
What will life be like after the Internet? Thanks to the mass surveillance undertaken by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the general creepiness of companies like Google and Facebook, I’ve found myself considering this question. I mean, nothing lasts forever, right?
There’s a broad tech backlash going on right now; I wonder just how deep the disillusionment runs. I get the feeling that there are folks out there who would relish putting the Internet behind us sooner rather than later. Imagine that: even the Internet could be a thing of the past one day. What would that be like? No Facebook. No Google. No government nerds looking through your webcam.
But could we become more secure without abandoning the Internet? What if there’s a third way? One that doesn’t involve either passive resignation to being exploited or a Luddite smash-the-looms fantasy. What if we began to develop and encourage the adoption of machines and a network that are actually secure—through which neither thieves, corporations, nor the NSA could track us—and what if these could be configured by us, to really do what we want them to do? To stop the spying, stealing and monitoring, but to allow other things to continue.
What would that look like? Read more here: http://creativetimereports.org/2014/03/24/david-byrne-breaking-up-with-the-internet/
