A zoo and the wild west all rolled up into one
The wild west was wild because unknown baddies wandered around and some did some random anti-social things. It was easy to be anonymous.
Anonymous, transient, and unaccountable can easily lead to irresponsible.
In World War I the air was likewise. Airplanes were new, they were unmarked, there was no radar, no defenses against them, they zoomed in (terrifyingly) from above and dropped bombs … anonymous, transient, and unaccountable.
That’s what we have today re: the internet . . .
So like the wild west: anonymous, transient, widespread, far-flung.
99.9% of people use the internet benignly; 0.1% use it malignantly. Of three billion users, three million are internet baddies. They’ll ruin everything. The coming cyberwars will be bad.
The governments won’t long allow anonymity. They’ll be making every effort to domesticate the zoo. But they’ve met their match. This one is too big and too wild.
