For my final external event, I watched a recording of Yasha Levine’s talk that he did at UR earlier this year on “The Internet as a Weapon.”

I found the talk really interesting. Levine focused on the history of the Internet and how it was originally created as form of spyware. The idea was that the US government could gain information on political organization through the Internet and then use that information to put an end to the organizations. Within the United States, the Internet was mostly accepted, aside from some against it in the 70s, because it is an American invention. URLs are in English, websites were created within the United States, and the United States was the main exporter of information via the Internet. I had never thought of this aspect of the Internet prior to watching this talk. Other countries did not experience the same ease of acclamation to the Internet and were much more weary of it. However, this information about the creation of the Internet is not represented when reporting on the history of the Internet.

This information raises concerns within two major topics that we have discussed: ethics and the representation of history.

If the Internet was created with the intent of being used as spyware, is anything that is now done on the Internet really ethical? On top of that, websites such as Facebook (and really most others) gain information about its uses that they then sell to create a profit. (This also ties into an issue the Levine notes about how the Internet was marked as a great equalizer of socioeconomic classes but it has actually created a whole other group of elites–Zuckerberg, Gate, Bezos, etc.). With the intent and the current actions of the Internet being unethical, is there any way to justify its use as ethical? Or is it just one of those things that is so ingrained into society that there is no real way to avoid it even though it is unethical? After watching the video, I’m leaning towards the latter, the ethics of the Internet cannot be justified but it is necessary within today’s society.

In history, we’ve established that it is important to share all sides of the stories. In the case fo the Internet, this would include knowledge of the original intent behind the creation of the Internet, not just the unity aspects that are mostly shown. However, with the original intent not being fully known, the full history of the Internet is not be accurately shown

Here’s a link to video, I really recommend watching it, I thought that it was really interesting.