For his talk Yasha Levine started out by showing a video that was “A Kid’s Guide to the Internet.” He used this video to start off his talk on a positive, funny note because he knew that this topic was not lighthearted. People once viewed the internet as having a lot of promise to create a new world. Overtime, however, people have become more and more fearful of the internet and concerned about its power. Levine pointed out that the world has a lot more problems now than it did at the start of the tech era and the internet, so clearly hopes for the internet were not reality. Still, it was not until more recently that many people became more concerned about the internet. The 2016 election can be considered a turning point in fear of the internet. Levine, however, argues that this fear is based on the false perception that the 2016 election was the first time the internet had been used to sway an election or do something similar. Levine argues that there was never a moment when the internet was not a weapon.
The internet is by no means an innocent technology. Many people are not starting to realize that is has been weaponized in a way so powerful that it was even able to throw an election. Some people go so far as to call hijacking the internet a weapon of war. Levine even mentioned that one of his congressmen refers to hijacking the internet as equivalent to Pearl Harbor. The internet has always been and remains, though more powerful than people originally thought it would be, an information weapon. This is not a new phenomenon, as the internet has been used as a method of spreading propaganda and surveilling people since at least the 1990s. It even had implications before then. Levine mentioned technology and the internet’s connection to the Vietnam War, which was particularly relevant given what we discussed in class. Technology is a new kind of war that we will need to find a new way to fight against.
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