Eternity SW

From here to eternity

Being a few words describing an ISV journey …

2006-07-23 : Why the internet is what it is

All my friends keep asking me why the internet is a seething morass of decreptitude and debatable morals. Err, to be honest it's just the same two friends, but they do ask often. They ask every time their computer gets invaded by a pernicious worm and they have to pay a geek to fix it. They ask me when they receive 80 000 emails in their Outlook inbox offering to enlarge their genitalia. [P.S. Is it just Outlook users that get these great offers?]

Well, the answer lies within: the internet is an anarchic society. It is an example of what it would be like to live in a truly lawless society. We cannot truly control the internet or its content because there are no laws (or so few that matter). Hence, we have a scenario where the internet plays host to all the criminals, losers and evildoers on the planet (or at least those that can pay $10 an hour at an internet cafe). Consequently we wll suffer from this overload of garbage until the internet grows some law enforcement.

Until then, think of the internet as the wild wild west, only more wild, and ubiquitous in every direction. So next time you open your door to the web, remember that the internet is "owned" by the few, but used by the many.