The web was supposed to replace the mainstream media and allow us to escape the narratives of those with power and money who were consolidating their influence and expanding their reach for the last 40 years. It was supposed to be ungovernable, out of reach for governments and mega-corporations. Instead, it ended up as a series of walled gardens used by billions, strangling the life out of the rest of the ecosystem as their algorithms poison our discourse.
But it doesn’t mean it has to be this way, or that it’s time for us to give up hope. We just need to understand what happened, why, and how to hijack the system so it can serve us again, instead of grifters, scammers, and billionaires who see themselves as the kind of digital shoguns promised to us by dystopian cyberpunk novels and anime.
In this chat, independent journalist, political analyst, and friend of CSG, Ahmed Baba, and I talk about media and digital consolidation, the tech oligarchs’ plans for what’s next, how and why people are being radicalized online, why today’s extremists aren’t the same as they were in the 1990s and 2000s, and how to make the web more fun, less exploitative, and less angry than it is today. For the video version, hop on over to Ahmed’s Substack, and maybe subscribe once you’re there.
CSG articles touched on during the discussion…
For further reference, check out…
And to see what the media looks like in truly authoritarian nations, check out the Dark World Of TV series by Joshua Perry Parker which watches a day of programming in a totalitarian or authoritarian regime and recounts the history of how it got that way.
