Google and Facebook extend internet access across the world, but the access is generally speaking to an internet that is focused on the advertisers to those sites.

Google and Facebook extend internet access across the world, but the access is generally speaking to an internet that is focused on the advertisers to those sites.

This is what engineers in Silicon Valley typically do. "Ok, well, of course there are some problems of our technology because it is so excellent and is so global so we are just gonna build a better one."

In its early days the Internet seem to be a counter cultural space and an anti corporate space, now is the place for corporate economic production. What the internet is now isn't what it used to be and it doesn't have to be what it turns into.

When I was in graduate school at MIT I was trying to think about how to develop software and systems for farmers and villagers in India. In the process of doing that, I realized that my reference point was internal to the laboratory, rather than in the communities that I was wanting to serve. I realized that I could no longer assume what a good technology looks like from inside the laboratory; instead, I had to be in the world with people. Not just designing for them but with them.

The point I'm trying to make is if these networks of communication technologies are owned, monetized, surveilled, and classified by those with power - very few people, mainly white men in Silicon Valley - then it is a global village build upon the ideas, visions, words, and protocols of the few. So it's not global - it's like Epcot center. It's like Disneyland: a small worldview of the larger world.

Fake news is a product of the internet that is not transparent. Fake news can spread online because as users we have no idea where any of the content we see comes from.