An article in the December 9, 2024, edition of The New York Times alerted readers to a potential "ban" of Tik Tok in the United States. As Wikipedia tells us (any of us who may be otherwise unaware), Tik Tok is "a short-form video hosting service owned by a Chinese internet company, ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from three seconds to 60 minutes. Tik Tok can be accessed with a smart phone app or the web."
The United States government believes that "national security" is imperiled by the use of Tik Tok by American citizens, given that Tik Tok is owned by a Chinese company, which presumably means that the Chinese government might have easy access to any information that appears on Tik Tok, and might also be able to use the application to undermine our democracy.
As The Times' article tells us, it turns out that "a panel of three judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit" agree with the government ban. Unless ByteDance sells Tik Tok to some company of which the government approves, it will be banned in the United States by mid-January (apparently, at just about the time the nation welcomes its next president).
I am not a Tik Tok user. I have no real idea what its fate may be. However, I want to use the occasion of the discussion about Tik Tok to make a more "general" point.
More and more, our avenues of communication are all "online." We talk to friends and others, debate the issues of the day, and become informed about what's going on by way of various internet platforms. Tik Tok is one of them (and is owned by a Chinese company). Other platforms are owned by U.S. companies (Google, and Facebook, and "X," for instance).
Here's the issue I suggest we need to think about: If our ability to communicate and to participate in society, and in the "politics" that I think is so very important), depends on internet platforms (and especially ones that are under the control of giant corporations that operate in their own, private interest, not in the "public" interest) we are absolutely at risk of losing our ability to communicate among ourselves, and we might lose that ability at a moment's notice.
Tik Tok, Tik Tok, Tik Tok.... the clock is ticking down towards a massive internet outage. Maybe that outage will be caused by some natural event, like a solar flare, or maybe it will be caused by some action by a government hostile to the United States, or maybe it will be caused by some action of our own government, or perhaps even by private corporate action. If, or maybe better said, "when" that occurs, we will not be in a position to "organize," or to do much of anything else. Our ability to communicate with each other, and to find out what is going on in the world, is something that we take for granted. But... all that is now almost totally dependent on systems that live on the internet.
We have built our interconnected society, in other words, on a massively unreliable foundation. This is true because the "online world" is different from the "real world." It is particularly noteworthy that our online world is "owned" by private corporations, controlled by billionaires whose interest is not "public service," but private profit.
This is just something to think about, as you ponder my oft-repeated suggestion that you "Find Some Friends."
I mean "real world" friends!
Tik Tok, Tik Tok, Tik Tok.
The online world is doubly removed from the "real" or Natural World. It is an integral part of the human manufactured world, which is isolated from the Natural World of all other living beings. While humans increasingly isolate themselves in sterile tower blocks in cities devoid of other than humans and their captive domesticates, human minds are increasingly isolated from non-human world and all of its diversity.
ReplyDeleteThis too shall pass.