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What is the most powerful thing I've learned in this course?

The Journey Between Newspaper_culture and People_and_the_network

What does this path mean?

My goal with this path is to show how the internet is not necessarily a completely new invention, but rather an extension and evolutiion of pre-existing social and political notions. The most powerful thing I learned in this course was how new ways of transmitting informations intensified notions Control and Agency, providing for a more powerful solution to control the mass while advertizing the internet as 'for' the people(People_and_the_network). I perceive the internet largely as a system of communications and information transferring, with the added benefits of creating communities (Digital_communities) and global connections. This was enabled by the Globalization_of_communication which extended control to all four corners of the world. However, with that expansion, it was easier to also extend political power and agendas, rendering the internet not as a source of free information, but as a source of controlled information. It goes without saying that information has always been controlled in different ways, like limiting accessibility behind reading abilities (common in the middle Ages), restricting information behind authoritative figures like the Church did in the past, or destroying culture and literature like happened during the Mongolian dynasties with various cultures. For this reason, with my path, I want to highlight how physical ways of controlled information (i.e. newspaper) evolved to the digital web and what that change implied on the consumer of that information.

The first step in the journey is about Newspaper_culture. Newspaper, until roughly the 2000s, was the mainstream way of getting information and transmitting knowledge about and around the world. The agencies writing these newspapers would carefully and intentionally curate stories and information that would convey their Agency and political agendas. Already then, information control and propaganda agendas plague the system, but its physicality limits who sees it and how easy it is to spread.

The next step looks at the Transmission_of_knowledge, to help us understand the selectiveness of knowledge, especially relevant with the case of newspaper. Sometime we take for granted how knowledge reaches us, therefore, it's important to understand how the information read on newspapers are a result of the efforts of coordination of agencies that made it possible. The coming of the internet will introduce new factors that will further dictates how information can be controlled.

Agency is the next step, which is closely interconnected with the Transmission_of_knowledge as agency is what dictates what can and should be read. Who here decides what is important and what isn't? Who decides what is left behind, and what the public can see? These are all questions that considers the agency of information.

We are then brought to my note about Imperialist_internet, which is inherently governed and directed by governments agencies. This note is interesting because it highlights the imperial tendencies that were present during the development of the internet all the way starting from the invention of the telegraph, which saw Imperial_needs that preyed on natural resources from non-western countries for materials like cables. This imperial character would remain dominant during for the creation of the internet.

The following note about Control narrates the conflict of control that is present in the internet, further emphasizing on the notion seen earlier with the Transmission_of_knowledge. This one however talks about control in the specific context of the internet, and how there was a change from telegraph control to internet control. The telegraph was about political power (Politics_of_power) and connecting the world; the internet is still about political control, but now with a much more heavy emphasis on social control.

This then leads us to my interest of research entry about Control_and_censorship. This further develops the previous note about control but reconsiders an added dimension of censorship. This notion would be explored in the next note.

Censorship is an important aspect of my memex because it ties all the themes I have been focusing on: information, Agency, power, politics, and Control. The advent of the internet happened because there was a need to globalize the transmission of the internet, but now that information is so accessible and free, the government feels a need to implement policies to limit its impact. This often takes the form of censorship, with the intent of suppressing information that could threatened its society politically. The internet then becomes a library of information that was curated, selected, and approved for viewing. Anything that does not fit into the government's political agenda is subsequently oppressed and removed.

Our journey then ends with my final note (People_and_the_network) about the main themes surrounding the internet (mostly revolving around my memex 3). This note wraps all the themes together and reconsiders the internet as 'for the people.' The internet came to be following a Globalization_of_communication, so it was really a network for the people, but it was quickly preyed over by capitalist companies that sought to further expand their territory of profit. This was especially seen with the enttishitification of the web with trends like Freemium models exploding and rendering the digital platform a 'pay-to-win.' At the end of the note, I provide a question that concerns me very much: "How much of the internet will still be 'for the people' in 10-20 years?"

What does this tell me about the internet?

This path tells me a lot about I saw the internet in this course. Some may have seen it as something more technological, or a different perspective, but I saw it more as a tool. A tool that can be used for many different uses. A tool that is neither good or bad. A tool that is inadvertably guided by the agency of the user. In my memex, I tended to focus on the negative use of the tool, that of Control,Agency, and Censorship. The devlopement that led to the internet could be considered a Globalization_of_communication, but in this context, I would like to argue that the internet can also be seen as the globalization of control and censorship. With people constantly connected and 'present' on the internet, it allows political and capitalist parties to exert power over a wider range with maximum efficacy.

What could have changed and conclusive thoughts

Regarding this journey note, I think there a few things that I could have changed that would have made it easier and better. The first change involves the lack of gardening in my memex. While I thought I was gardening my notes appropriately, I was quickly made aware during my search for a journey path that my notes were only connected in 'batches.' So, I was getting paths that would only by 3-4 notes. I believe it would have been better if I appointed much more emphasis on gardening my notes and creating connections between notes. Another change that could prove beneficial is a more focus selection of sources. By this, I mean that choosing sources that are more evidently interrelated would have made the process of gardening much easier. Right now, the sources I have in my memex are separated by module (1, 2, and 3), so it is sometime hard to relate one part of the memex to the other. Even within those mini-memex, sources do not always follow a clear path or connection. Therefore, I think that a selection of sources with clearer connections would have made it easy for me to connect everything together. Overall, I am quite happy with the memex, but it is unfortunate that I only realized during my last memex (memex 3) that I should narrowed to a focused theme or issue about the internet.