Regress is an integral part of the progress of digital civilization

 The regression that accompanies the development of the World Wide Web and electronic communication through gadgets seems to be an integral part of the World Wide Web. Harmonization of the Internet, balancing between progress and regression, is the most important and urgent problem.

Tags:  information ,  technology ,  society ,  culture ,  progress ,  regression

The civilization of the era of computers and the Internet not only accelerates technological progress, but also slows down the use of what has already been created, prohibiting entire branches of human activity. This creates an artificial and ugly mix of created and blocked. That to which access is free, and that to which access is limited or closed.

The progress of the era of communication networks around the world predetermines regression. This circumstance is not advertised, but very seriously affects the lives of billions of people. There are a great many examples. Yes, right before your eyes at this moment.

I've had a VCR on a shelf under my TV for twenty years. On it, I copied television programs by simply pressing the "Rec" ("Record") button. And then he lost them. Now neither is possible. There is simply no output for such a recording on modern smart TVs! In order to record what is broadcast on a television screen, tricks are needed that only a professional can do. And you can’t buy the necessary equipment and software in the store. In the largest electronics stores in New York, the answer was: they don’t sell this.

Another example. Networks of communication, it would seem, provide an opportunity to communicate uncontrollably and uncensored. But this – even in the so-called free world – is absolutely not the case! Moderation is actually censorship.

Messages in the information feed that coincide with the views of the owners of the network get to a prominent place, and those that contradict them are placed deliberately in the "blind zones". And even blocked. Moreover, blocking for the most ridiculous reasons for a certain period or (like Trump) completely and forever is a common thing. For example, I was blocked for the first time “for posting pornography” in an article ... about fascist pogroms. And a photograph of the pogrom in Lvov was taken as pornographic, in which a woman in a torn dress (dressed, whose legs above her knees are visible from under the torn dress) runs under the blows of a hooting crowd ...

An ingenious program of the same Google translation from any language to any other language. Moreover, there are already more than a hundred languages ​​​​available to Google-translator. No polyglot can keep up! However, at the same time, Google itself limits what they have done. So the translation can be viewed on YouTube - with subtitles and a printout of the spoken text. Progress and regress are combined into an indivisible whole.

In order to hear opera two hundred years ago, one had to go to the theatre. One hundred and fifty years ago, in order to hear Chaliapin or a performance of Richter, one had to buy an audio (and then a video) recording. Now this is optional. Websites have appeared on the Internet that contain hundreds of thousands of performances of classical and jazz music. All composers and all great performers. And this "reservoir" is constantly replenished by the listeners themselves. At the same time, anyone who has the appropriate CD-ROM can easily replenish the collection for the whole world.

In the West, such sites are blocked, since a significant part of the recordings violate copyright: each CD costs from 5 to 25 dollars. However, in countries that ignore European and American law as far as possible, such audio feeding of sites occurs freely. This gives users the opportunity to listen to any classic in any village absolutely free of charge. What is this? Progress or regression? Lawlessness - or just another law? Perhaps, nevertheless, a law that will inevitably replace the accepted copyright.

Or take, for example, tourism. In the era of GPS navigators, tourism could be completely different. The navigator in my Toyota obsessively tells me where the neighborhood restaurants, coffee shops, gas stations and shops are. Tells you how long it will take to get to your destination by car, bus or on foot. Indicating even traffic jams and time in them. And reminding me where, while I'm eating, I can shop, have a snack, fill up with gasoline ... However, a worldwide tourism network based on the same GPS - only culture would be no less useful.

Just imagine. When you click on the corresponding icon, cultural attractions appear around the place where you are. With an indication of exhibitions and performances that you can go to. If you are interested in the history of the house near which you are standing, it will be told and shown to you. If you want to walk around the museum, GPS will guide you better than any guide. Such a global cultural and tourist network can be created similarly to the existing sites of classical music, which, I repeat, can be replenished by every connoisseur. Well, ratings for descriptions can be done in the image and likeness of Wikipedia. That is a real symbiosis of existing programs.

Creation of such a global cultural-educational-tourist network using a combination of existing programs is the question of the month. In the event that it is not blocked in the interests of travel companies. The business of which (like the business of the telephone companies ten years ago) will be forced to change - but will not disappear.

Note that new programs are blocked all the time. Some, under the influence of technological progress, disappear, but new ones appear. Taking sometimes ugly, and sometimes (when politics is mixed in) and frankly harmful forms.

In 2008, Nobel laureate in physics Murray Gell-Man came to Russia for the first time in fifty years at a conference in Moscow. As I met the creator of the theory of Quarks in St. Petersburg, I was settled in the House of Scientists (the palace of Prince Vladimir) on the Palace Embankment. The next morning Gell-Man, to my amazement, for some reason asked where the nearest five-star hotel was. And when we went around the corner and settled in the lobby of this hotel, I began to use the Skype program to talk to America and Europe for free. The twist is that Skype was blocked everywhere except in some hotels! Then this restriction, introduced at the request of the telephone companies, was removed and forgotten. WhatsApp and other communication networks have emerged, including free phone calls, including video calls. But at the same time, new no less artificial and in many cases regressive restrictions. And even, as in the case of the impossibility of recording TV channels programs from the TV screen with video recorders, they reverse it.

In nature, hereditary information is transmitted by DNA molecules. And organisms exchange information in such a way that it is recoded from physical processes into physiological ones, never being transmitted directly to the brain. For example, human vision perceives electromagnetic waves that are converted into nerve impulses. Hearing perceives acoustic vibrations that are converted into chemical signals propagated along the nerves. And so it is with all living beings - from unicellular to mammals, it seems, without exception.

On the Internet, things are different. An electromagnetic signal network has been created covering the entire planet. In wildlife, it has no analogues. How exactly such a system created by a reasonable person will develop, whether it can be harmonized and whether it is doomed to self-destruction are the most important questions for the existence and survival of mankind. The regression that accompanies the development of the World Wide Web and electronic communication through gadgets seems to be an integral part of the World Wide Web. Harmonization of the Internet, balancing between progress and regression, is the most important and urgent problem.