Internet Counterevolution doesn’t mean a return to the status quo ante of the world before the Internet. Globalization goes on,…
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Internet Counterevolution doesn’t mean a return to the status quo ante of the world before the Internet. Globalization goes on, it just loses its glamour; where there was spreading prosperity there is offshored exploitation, where there was free-moving discussion there are cyberwar trolls, where there was your happy face in a Facebook there’s in instant police dossier that you foolishly built yourself, where nobody knew you were a dog you are now branded-and-sorted Stack livestock, and so on. Twenty-teens globalization looks less like jet-set free-spending yuppie tourism and more like hordes of illegal Syrians arriving via Facebook support groups. The wanderers are mostly Moslems, because the effect of the digital“Arab Spring” on their somnolent societies was catastrophic. It’s amazing how badly that harmed them, and they show no sign of getting over it; on the contrary. But refugee life is for anybody, now. Rich or poor, they can all be fleeing, at a moment’s notice, if they get a sudden deluge of Greenhouse rain. People everywhere are afraid of immigrants now because they see their own face in that mirror.