1984 Revisited

A friend told me an interesting piece  of news. He had visited a
particular site, and  found some very interesting and controversial piece
of news. He informed others, and was surprised, half an hour later, when he
found out that the news was no longer where it was before–on the home page. He
searched for it, but in vain.

If something is printed on paper, it can remain. But on the Web, it can be
made to quietly disappear. The past can be erased, the erasure can be forgotten,
the lie can become truth. Just as in 1984, when Oceania was at war with Eastasia–Oceania
was always at war with Eastasia–the information that we are fed can be easily
manipulated.

And if you want to shrug the whole thing away, and say that such Cassandras
of doom have always existed, well, don’t. Today, there exists the wherewithal
to do things similar to what was done in 1984.

In 1984, two things were most pronounced–the misinformation propaganda
carried out by the Ministry of Truth, and the loss of privacy, which the Thought
Police ensured with the aid of tele-screens. In 1984, tele-screens were used to
keep a constant eye on everything that a member of the Party did. Today’s
devices are a lot more subtle, and you can be tracked wherever you go on the
Web.

True, most of this is not done to destroy you, merely to "help" you
buy what the big conglomerates feel you should be owning. But the lack of
privacy is definitely chilling. When the Web came into being, it was supposed to
help the small guy. For example, one of the first major benefits, apart from
e-mail, was the ability to self-publish content on the Web. Anybody could take
some space on GeoCities or Tripod, and become his own publisher. And well,
almost everybody did.

But to become really good, you need branding. And that is getting costlier. A
few years ago, some experts believed that $10 million was enough. But today,
even several times that figure becomes a small sum when you are trying to make a
mark. In other words, the cost of entry is very steep.

Another thing is the emergence of large entities that span several areas.
Think of it as Microsoft owning the Press. Do you think that any heavily
negative piece against Microsoft would ever feature? Not a chance. Such a
publication would definitely feed you information about Microsoft which they
feel you should be knowing.

AOL-TW has a lot of publications under its fold, and one wonders if any of
them will be allowed to be openly critical of the company. Fortunately, in
India, foreign publications are not allowed, which is welcome because it might
lead to an aggressive manipulation of the information that is fed to users.

So, lack of privacy and misinformation can be very rampant on the Web. True,
the government claims that privacy will be kept in mind, but then again, the
wheels of justice, at any given point in time, grind exceedingly slow. And when
compared to the speed of the Internet, they grind to a dead halt.

And the most chilling thing is that, while in 1984, the government plays the
big brother, in the days to come, it is liable to be large conglomerates which
will take on this role. And if you thought that governments were bad, just wait
until the big corporations take over.

Parthian shot

In The Adventure of the Six Napoleons Sherlock Holmes says, "The press,
Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use it."
While Holmes passed on the wrong information to the press to ensure the smooth
passage of justice, today, lesser men who want to use misinformation for their
own ends have adopted a similar slogan.

Don’t let it happen.

Balaji N

The views expressed here are those of the author