That the Internet is full of terrible things is not exactly a revelation, but a point worth noting.
Terrorist recruiting, flame wars, trolls, hackers and depictions of deviant behavior. You want it? It’s out there. So when presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton — in their respectively typical over-the-top and triangulated ways — suggested cutting off the Internet or at least parts of it, it did not seem like a completely irrational point.
Certainly, technologists scoffed. After all, the Internet was designed as a fail-safe computer network that can’t just be shut down. But the average person, perhaps, thought there is lots of crummy stuff out there that we could do without.
And that is entirely true.
But in the interest of balance, given all this criticism the Internet has faced lately, let’s list a few great (or at least harmless) things about the global network: Finding great radio stations in cities far away from where you live; cat videos (dog videos, too); not staying up late to see the one good Saturday Night Live skit; staying in touch with family and friends around the world; great recipes.
None of that, of course, even touches on the change-the-world technologies in medicine, commerce, communications, artificial intelligence, education and any number of fields that wouldn’t exist without the Internet.
So, Internet, you’ve got an ugly streak for sure. But maybe you’re getting a bum rap.