Guardian”- Internet Dangers” Chandran Nair, 2013

Jay OwenGlobal Citizen, Trendspotting, Information Technology Issues

“Ethical Markets highlights the trendspotting of our global Advisory Board member Chandran Nair, founder of GIFT and author of “Consumptionomics” (2011) and other books.  Nair’s early warning on all the social costs of  un-assessed, unregulated explosion of global internet connectivity are only recently reassessed!

 

~Hazel Henderson, Editor“

Five dangers the internet poses to a sustainable world

It’s time to slay the sacred cow that the internet is a force only for good

In recent months the world has been consumed by the tit for tat internet spying allegations between the US and China.

Then came the news that the NSA has worked with some of the internet’s leading companies to not only spy on American citizens but those of Europe and Hong Kong as well.

Much of the ensuing debate has thus been about the erosion of privacy by the state and by large corporations increasingly using big data to “understand” customers and the behaviour of their staff.

But in the midst of this obsession with the privacy issue there has been little attention to other equally corrosive impacts of the internet revolution. Part of the problem is that until very recently, but hopefully no longer, the debate was framed in such a way as to cast any and all critics of the internet as either luddites or somehow anti-freedom.

There are four dangers, besides state surveillance, the internet poses which could make the world ungovernable and dangerous, destroy innocence and speed resource depletion.

First, it allows anyone to make their own guns and bombs, incite hatred and mobilise instant protests without regard to the consequences. Second, it creates unmanageable industrial espionage that will end the idea of businesses operating ethically. Third, it allows porn to reach every corner of the world, making access to the degradation of women only a click away. And fourth, it ramps up the speed of consumption and reduces its costs, hastening environmental destruction and resource depletion.

Dangers of pornography

The unrestricted access to porn by everyone from potential sexual predators to underage children is now making some headlines.

The United States has implemented an almost laughably limp system whereby adult websites can voluntarily list themselves under .XXX domain names. Iceland, Saudi Arabia and India are all considering bans on pornography, while the UK has plans to ban it on public wireless connections.

Yet at a time when a single porn site can account for almost 2% of total internet traffic, there is almost no reliable research into the effects that this explosion and instant access has on our societies, especially the young.

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