Shira Ovide’s analysis, “Our faith in technology officially died this week,” published in the Washington Post online on March 8, set off alarm bells for me.
In the 1980s and 1990s, I edited Change, a higher education magazine that promoted, among other topics, what the Internet and the World Wide Web could do for us—scholarly communication, knowledge acquisition, lower education Cost conferences, teaching and learning, and more. It all came true and then some.
Alas, “some people back then” gave us an open sewer that facilitated the worst of us all over the world. It is now a world of cyberattacks, online bullying, denial of service, data breaches, fake images, ransomware gangs, voice cloning, spyware and chatbots. Now artificial intelligence is exacerbating the increase in harm. A great innovation thrives, then dies.
The basic rules of the Internet—sender anonymity and provider immunity among them—were set a generation ago, on the assumption that users would behave in good faith and that the best versions of online communities would prevail. But we are now in a new place and need to readjust.
It’s time for a White House summit like the one President Theodore Roosevelt convened in 1905 to develop rules to save college football. Large social networks need to join this effort as an act of self-preservation, if not repentance. Maybe the EU will force the issue; the UN may step up. But we do need leadership initiatives. There’s a Wild West out there that needs to be tamed.