Right now, nothing works.
No one answers their phone anymore if they don’t recognize the caller, because they know it’s a telemarketer, a robocall or a phishing scheme.
Email is overrun with identity-stealing scams and spammers. Fear and sextortion. This is a real email going around:
This PayPal ‘security authority’ can’t seem to write in complete sentences.
Commerce sites (including government ones, I got one from FEMA) are constantly releasing information on their latest data breech of users credit card/banking info.
You can’t sell anything on Craigslist without getting fake buyers and scammers contacting you. It’s getting so bad, people are afraid to post on it, that it will go out of business.
Google (and a host of other sites) collects all our information and sells it to the highest bidder. Their ‘Don’t Be Evil” motto doesn’t apply where profits are involved.
Facebook is lame, kids have stopped using it, and it’ll tank when enough advertisers can’t reach young buyers. When that happens, how many photos will be lost?
Jilted lovers are posting revenge sex videos and photographs, while hackers are exposing private photographs of celebrities and non-celebrities alike.
The system is broken.
Or worse. If it were new and presented to us in the condition it’s presently in, we would never accept it, never sign up.
Hi, want to join this new network of sites with misinformation mixed in with your news, (you can’t tell which is which), with scammers trying to steal your identity, hack your credit card, drain your bank account, extort money, and a phone that tracks your every move to sell your information to marketers? You in?
How much time are we wasting with all these technologies that work poorly and put us at risk? A lot!
I’m saying this so that I can have a record of it, published publicly. For this idea, consider me a futurist. The technology we have now will not last much longer in its present state.
I’ve had conversations several times this week with people to whom photography doesn’t mean much–pictures are not valuable–and they really are just obsessed with their phones and the generation of likes.
In ten years, we certainly won’t be walking into things and crashing our cars looking at these devices. We will look back and wonder what we were thinking.
It has to change to something reliable. Something trustworthy. Right now, nothing online can be trusted, it’s all un-curated.
That’s what’s coming. Curation. Web X.
We need gatekeepers for the art gallery, otherwise anyone can hang anything–that’s Flickr and Instagram. And the gallery isn’t representing the best artists, but simply the most popular ones. Really, who cares? So you have the ability to generate likes and build a following? So you’re popular? Who is this populace, do they have any taste? Does popularity mean you have anything to say? Why do you get so much wall space, just because you know how to lure an audience?
Nothing works like:
- A film camera to take pictures–you can share them with who you see when you see them. And no one gets them who you don’t want to have them.
- A typewriter to write a letter–it’s an all-in-one, writer and printer, no electricity needed, but just a bit of ribbon ink and a little finger strength.
- A record to play 12 songs–I don’t want to navigate through every song recorded from the beginning of time. I just want to listen to one Led Zeppelin album.
We’ve accepted the internet with all holes and back doors for criminals to get in. It’s insanity, and it’s going to go away. It has to. It’s not a working system.
What will replace it will be a curated web where only the validated can get in.
- News sources that if they publish something with an error, they lose their place in the new web. It will create new value for journalists and allow them to make a living doing their job writing accurate news, not merely being the first to report it.
- Banks with foolproof encryption systems that requires in-person validation to be included. If you can’t guarantee security, you don’t belong in online banking.
- Browsers that will allow no ads, unless the user opts in, and the advertisers pays them to view it. They are already here, and it’s going to change the way we see ads, if we choose to opt in.
- No data collection, no tracking, no selling of personal information. Zero. Google will go out of business, as that is their whole business.
- Communication that excludes scammers, phishers, and spammers. Email has to be replaced by a platform that keeps these criminals out of my view.
- Classified ad sites that block scammers and criminals. If they can’t control their users, they can’t be in the new web.
Because it’s broken.
We have to make a photograph to save our family history, not just for note-taking. Not just for sharing and swiping. People spend less than one second looking at photographs on Instagram and Flickr. That’s not even photography.
We need to be able to go to a concert without someone’s phone in our view. Why’s it their job to film the performance for their friends?
We need to make the phones inoperable in a moving vehicle.
We need to shut them off at the end of the day, to have them become a simple telephone overnight.
We need to get away from these time-stealing devices and share a meal or a drink with a friend.
The culture is suffering with everyone withdrawing into themselves, their technology,and not participating in life with friends and family. We are becoming depressed. We are acting out, becoming violent. It’s fostering hateful speech, and creating division.
We need it to stop. And it will.
Watch for Web X coming soon!
