What you have described would happen as the natural end result of a libertarian state. Because before smartphones we have seen how postwar industrialized America foster all sorts of addictions in consumers. From self-medication, which started in the '50s (watch Invasion of the Body Snatchers and count how many times characters casually pop pills or imbibe in the background), to fast food, to television, and then on to social media and everything else that the internet enabled that is what unregulated industry does where there is no opposing force- whether governmental or otherwise- to check its power.
Libertarianism manifests in many forms, and I would say the Internet Libertarian early-90's WIRED cyberpunk cowboy ideal one is less of a cohesive project than a scene. It's a vibe, a mood, that was doomed to end just as warehouse techno raves did as well. The libertarian ideal of being a cyber-cowboy on a wild untamed frontier, without intrusive power structures- whether bureaucratic government, fuddy-duddy corporations, or the uncool normie hoi polloi- taps into the same American dream of the Wild West or of a land of Jeffersonian yeomen. And is just as sustainable.
I understand your loss and anguish. But the same historical forces that created the technologies that captured the dreams of Internet Libertarianism are not all that different from the same forces that created social media and brought everyone else online into Eternal September. This is how society, perhaps all forms of growth, operate.
Libertarianism manifests in many forms, and I would say the Internet Libertarian early-90's WIRED cyberpunk cowboy ideal one is less of a cohesive project than a scene. It's a vibe, a mood, that was doomed to end just as warehouse techno raves did as well. The libertarian ideal of being a cyber-cowboy on a wild untamed frontier, without intrusive power structures- whether bureaucratic government, fuddy-duddy corporations, or the uncool normie hoi polloi- taps into the same American dream of the Wild West or of a land of Jeffersonian yeomen. And is just as sustainable.
I understand your loss and anguish. But the same historical forces that created the technologies that captured the dreams of Internet Libertarianism are not all that different from the same forces that created social media and brought everyone else online into Eternal September. This is how society, perhaps all forms of growth, operate.
reply