I found this image of an imagined Google homepage by searching Bing with the keywords "dystopian society internet." I think the image provides a great starting point for discussing the future implications of the Internet as a recent technological advancement. Specifically, the image casts a negative light on the future of society based on the characteristics of the medium itself (the artist has also alluded to George Orwell's classic novel,1984, in the title).
The image is dystopian in nature because it seems that people will have lost the capacity for independent thought in relying on a search engine to store and retrieve personal, business, and entertainment information. These notions of enslavement and dependency on technology are central to the defintion of dystopia. If this were to be our future, I think humans would be incredibly isolated from one another as a species, and the way we communicate would be very shallow. We need that face-to-face interaction with our family, friends and new acquaintances to stimulate our mental and emotional faculties.
The image is also mocking the Internet's potential effect on human memory by implying that we would all need to visit a search engine to potentially remember an important fact about our best friend or to remember how many bedrooms one's home has if he or she were trying to sell it. Thus, the creator of this image has a dystopian stance on the communication technology of the Internet because of the negative effects it would have on our prized spaces and places of communication. Furthermore, I think that the image's creator is making a commentary on the profound power that the Internet has to change how we think and approach problems.
I believe that a potential solution to this future dystopian society would be to recognize in the present, that we have control over how we use the Internet. If people make a conscious effort to put to memory the things they value most, and use the Internet for supplementary knowledge and further research, this dystopia could be avoided. I think the problem lies in overreliance on this technological medium so if we can recognize, apply and stretch the power of our minds, then we could achieve a utopia where this is not an issue. Let's commit to memory the knowledge that is worthwhile and let the Internet only supplement what we value most.
