I Want an Internet of Humans

I'm going through some difficult times right now, for various reasons I'm not going into here. It's harder than usual to hold onto my hopes and dreams and the optimism for what's to come that fuels my life and powers me with energy. Unfortunately, there's also not a lot of support for those things in the world around me right now. Be it projects that I shared a vision with being shut down, be it hateful statements coming from and being thrown at a president elect in the US, politicians in many other countries, including e.g. the presidential candidates right here in Austria, or even organizations and members of communities I'm part of. It looks like the world is going through difficult times, and having an issue with holding on to hopes, dreams, and optimism. And it feels like even those that usually are beacons of light and preach hope are falling into the trap of preaching the fear of darkness - and as soon as fear enters our minds, it's starting a vicious cycle.

Some awesome person or group of people wrote a great dialog into Star Wars Episode I, peaking in Yoda's "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." - And so true this is. Think about it.

People fear about securing their well-being, about being able to live the life they find worth living (including their jobs(, and about knowing what to expect of today and tomorrow. When this fear is nurtured, it grows, leads to anger about anything that seems to threaten it. They react hatefully to anyone just seeming to support those perceived threats. And those targeted by that hate hurt and suffer, start to fear the "haters", and go through the cycle from the other side. And and in that climate, the basic human uneasy feeling of "life for me is mostly OK, so any change and anything different is something to fear" falls onto fertile ground and grows into massive metathesiophobia (fear of change) and things like racism, homophobia, xenophobia, hate of other religions, and all kinds of other demons rise up.

Those are all deeply rooted in sincere, common human emotions (maybe even instincts) that we can live with, overcome and even turn around into e.g. embracing infinite diversity in infinite combinations like e.g. Star Trek, or we can go and shove them away into a corner of our existence, not decomposing them at their basic stage, and letting them grow until they are large enough that they drive our thinking, our personality - and make us easy to influence by people talking to them. And that works well both for the fears that e.g. some politicians spread and play with and the same for the fears of their opponents. Even the fear of hate and fear taking over is not excluded from this - on the contrary, it can fire up otherwise loving humans into going fully against what the actually want to be.

That said, when a human stands across another human and looks in his or her face, looks into their eyes, as long as we still realize there is a feeling, caring other person on the receiving end of whatever we communicate, it's often harder to start into this circle - if we are already deep into the fear and hate, and in some other circumstances this may not be always true, but in a lot of cases it is.

On the Internet, not so much. We interact with and through a machine, see an "account" on the other end, remove all the context of what was said before and after, of the tone of voice and body language, of what surroundings others are in, we reduce to a few words that are convenient to type or what the communication system limits us to - and we go for whatever gives us the most attention. Because we don't actually feel like we interact with other real humans, it's mostly about what we get out of it. A lot of likes, reshares, replies, interactions. It helps that the services we use maximize whatever their KPI are and not optimize for what people actually want - after all, they want to earn money and that means having a lot of activity, and making people happy is not an actual goal, at best a wishful side effect.

We need to change that. We need to make social media actually social again (this talk by Chris Heilmann is really worth watching). We need to spread love ("make Trek, not Wars" in a tounge-in-cheek kind of way, no meaning negativity towards any franchise, but thinking about meanings and how we can make things better for our neighbors, our community, our world), not even hate the fear or fear the hate (which leads back into the circle), but analyze it, take it seriously and break it down. If we understand it, know how to deal with it, but not let it overcome us, fear can even be healthy - as another great screenwriter put it "Fear only exists for one purpose: To be conquered". That is where we need to get ourselves, and need to help those other humans end up that spread hate and unreflected fear - or act out of that. Not by hating them back, but by trying to understand and help them.

We need to see the people, the humans, behind what we read on the Internet (I deeply recommend for you to watch this very recent talk by Erika Baker as well). I don't see it as a "Crusade against Internet hate" as mentioned in the end of that talk, but more as a "Rally for Internet love" (unfortunately, some people would ridicule that wording but I see it as the love of humanity, the love for the human being inside each and everyone of us). I'm always finding it mind-blowing that every single person I see around me, that reads this, that uses some software I helped with, and every single other person on this planet (or in its orbit, there are none out further at this time as far as I know), is a fully, thinking, feeling, caring human being. Every one of those is different, every one of those has their own thoughts and fears that need to be addressed and that we need to address. And every one of those wants to be loved. And they should be. No matter who they voted for. No matter if they are a president elect or a losing candidate. We don't need to agree with everything they are saying. But their fears should be addressed and conquered. And yes, they should be loved. Their differences should be celebrated and their commonalities embraced at the same time. Yes, that's possible, think about it. Again, see the philosophy of infinite diversity in infinite combinations.

I want an Internet that connects those humans, brings them closer together, makes them understand each other more, makes them love each other's humanity. I don't care how many "things" we connect to the Internet, I care that the needs and feelings of humans and their individual and shared lives improve. I care that their devices and gadgets are their own, help their individuality, and help them embrace other humans (not treat them as accounts and heaps to data to be analyzed and sold stuff to). I want everyone to see that everyone else is (just) human, and spread love to or at least embrace them as humans. Then the world, the humans in it, and myself, can make it out of the difficult times and live long and prosper in the future.

I want an Internet of humans.
We all, me, you can start creating that in how we interact with each other on social networks and other places on the web and even in the real world, and we can build it into whatever work we are doing.

I want an Internet of humans.
Can, will, you help?