Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers. Robert A Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
I have been taunted on various platforms recently for becoming a Neo-Conservative, and have been the object of some fascinating web-site and blog stuff, from the isolationist Right as well as from the peaceniks, who both argue in a semi-literate way that Neo-Conservativism is Trotskyism and ‘permanent revolution’ reborn.
Sometimes, you have to comb an overt anti-Semitism out of this propaganda before you can even read it straight. And I can guarantee you that none of these characters has any idea at all of what the theory of ‘permanent revolution’ originally meant. Christopher Hitchens
Certainly I’m not going to sit on the internet all day and read what Sam from Iowa is saying about me. But I’m a sponge. I’ve always been a sponge. Eminem
The advantage of the internet is that it has taken away the charade of politics. China has heard of democracy and people know about certain concepts they wouldn't have previously. Marilyn Manson
November 29th 2009: a quiet town in Cheshire is rocked by the discovery of a woman’s body. Her suspect is on the run, and the clues to the murder are on a social networking site. Social networks have become a twenty-first century global phenomenon, but in wrong hands there is a dark side. In the space of a year five British women were brutally murdered, all of them linked to the sinister misuse of a social network. Murder on the Social Network, 2011
The police discover that Chapman had ten social networking accounts and six thousand young female friends. ibid.
3While we may blame the Internet for the ease with which conspiracy theories proliferate, the net is really much more culpable for the way it connects everything to almost everything else. The hypertext link, as we used to call it, allows any fact or idea to become intimately connected with any other. Douglas Rushkoff
The future freedom of the internet is in doubt. Orwell Rolls in His Grave 2003
It’s the decade on the Internet and everyone wants in on the act. The 90s: The Decade That Connected Us s1e2, National Geographic 2014
An information Superhighway now paved with gold. The 90s: The Decade That Connected Us s1e5: Exposed
As long as government is allowed to collect all Internet data, the perceived exigency will drive honest civil servants to reach more broadly and deeply into our networked lives. Yochai Benkler
We end where we started – in a third world village, in touch, where we’re all going to be in the twenty-first century – on the net, and like it or not, connected. James Burke, Connections s3e10: In Touch, BBC 1997
It’s just twenty-five years since the Worldwide Web was created ... It’s now caught in the greatest controversy of its life: surveillance. Horizon: Inside the Dark Web, BBC 2014
One of the boom industries on the dark web is financial crime. ibid.
Internet dating is big business. It’s worth over two billion dollars per year. And claims to generate a fifth of all committed relationships. Horizon: How to Find Love Online, BBC 2016
‘There is no way that these algorithms can do what they claim to do.’ ibid. Eli Finkel
‘Even believing that there is such a thing as a soulmate tends to be destructive to relationships.’ ibid.
On the morning of May 12th NHS staff were about to be confronted by a major outbreak as an epidemic swept like wildfire across the country. But the disease didn’t affect patients and it wasn’t biological, instead it attacked the central nervous system of the NHS itself. Across the country computer systems were knocked out by a highly contagious computer virus. Horizon: Cyber Attack: The Day the NHS Stopped, BBC 2017
‘We know that what we’re doing matters to a lot of people.’ Horizon: Inside the Social Network: Facebook’s Difficult Year, worker, BBC 2019
For a company called Facebook you rarely get to see the faces behind the app. These are the people in charge of the biggest social media network in the world, and with nearly a third of all humans plugged into their platform it’s an experiment that comes with an enormous risk. ibid.
Data links, fake news and hacks on user security are threatening to destroy everything they’ve built, as Facebook has suffered a year of deepening scandals and intense media scrutiny. ibid.
They’ve grown a business in just fifteen years worth half a trillion dollars. ibid.
Their early mantra: Move Fast and Break Things. ibid.
They are hiring more engineers at a staggering rate. ibid.
From abuse hurled at women appearing on Question Time to bomb threats sent to campaigners agitating for more female heroes on banknotes, from the sexually explicit trail of women in pop videos to rape jokes, is there a new culture abroad in which men – and it is mainly men – seem to think they have the freedom and the right – to speak about, write about, and portray women in a derogatory even abusive way? And is this culture now infecting and polluting the lives of schoolgirls? Kirsty Wark, Blurred Lines: The New Battle of the Sexes, BBC 2014
‘This terrible grab-bag of loathing women.’ ibid. Germaine Greer
A Mormon student surfs the Internet for a school assignment and discovers that Mormon founder Joseph Smith had multiple wives, even marrying a 14-year-old.
A returned Mormon missionary, preparing a Sunday school lesson, comes across a website alleging that the Book of Mormon was plagiarized from a novel.
Surprised by what they find so easily online, more and more Mormons are encountering crises of faith. Some even leave the fold and, feeling betrayed, join the ranks of Mormon opponents. Peggy Fletcher Stack, article The Washington Post 1st February 2012, ‘Mormons Confront Epidemic on Online Misinformation’
I’ve got to make sure that Youtube comes down to tape this. The Office US s5e16: Lecture Circuit I, Michael, NBC 2009
You’ll have to be more specific, Dwight. I get about eight emails a day. The Office US s6e10: Murder, Michael
I have emailed you four times asking you to come to my desk. The Office US s6e20: New Leads, Angela
Acxiom is well aware of the thorny private issues involved with a company that deals with personal information ... In 2003 some of that data was hacked from one of Acxiom’s servers. Big Brother, Big Business, 2006
In August 2005 the Department of Justice subpoenaed AOL, Yahoo, MNS and Google seeking records of what people search for on the internet. ibid.
The Internet can be a hunting ground for those looking to exploit the vulnerable. Death by Email
In July 2005 a thirty-two-year-old man from Coventry, England. The death of Mark Drybrough appeared to be a tragic yet straightforward case of suicide. But in the months and years that followed, his family and other campaigners would hunt for someone who had been instrumental in Mark’s death. ibid.
The sites where Mark was posting offered more than just a sympathetic ear. Campaigners and support groups are concerned that they can actively encourage and facilitate suicide. ibid.
Between six hundred and eight hundred young people commit suicide in the UK each year. ibid.
The house belonged to a forty-six year old state registered nurse William Melchert-Dinkel. ibid.
There on the front page campaigners were warning about a man who had been stalking internet chat rooms. ibid.
A case that would make legal history: State of Minnesota v William Francis Melchert Dinkel. ibid.
The new electronic independence re-creates the world in the image of a global village. Marshall McLuhan
They’ve got your name, and they know where you live. They’ve got your bank details. They’ve got you. Hackers have stolen information from thousands and thousands of us. Panorama: How Hackers Steal Your ID, BBC 2015
There have been big hacks of late targeting big companies. ibid.