The Internet: It’s time to talk

On the Internet…

Although this isn’t about digital marketing, we all play in the same sandbox. Walter Isaacson, CEO of the Aspen Institute, has a few thoughts about how we can make the internet a better place for everyone.

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The internet is broken. Starting from scratch, here’s how I’d fix it

My big idea is that we have to fix the internet. After forty years, it is corroding, both itself and us. It is still a marvelous and miraculous invention. However, there are bugs in the foundation, bats in the belfry, and trolls in the basement.

This is not a technophobic rant. I am not dissing the Internet for rewiring our brains to give us the twitchy attention span of Donald Trump on Twitter. Or pontificating about how we have to log off and smell the flowers. Qualms about new technologies will always exist (ever since Plato fretted that the technology of writing would threaten memorization and oratory). I love the internet and all of its digital offshoots. What I bemoan is its decline.

There is a bug in its original design. It at first seemed like a feature but has gradually, and now rapidly, been exploited by hackers and trolls and malevolent actors. Its packets are encoded with the address of their destination but not of their authentic origin. With a circuit-switched network, you can track or trace back the origins of the information, but that’s not true with the packet-switched design of the internet.

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