JEvents

 

For the record and as an historical reminder, this "commercialization process" of the Internet, lately also called "monetization", is very much like what happened to broadcast television after it's debut to the general US and UK public in the 1940s and to radio in the USA after it debuted to the general public in the 1920s(?).  It is also exactly what happened to cable television in the USA which has all but destroyed broadcast network television since it's advent in the 1990s, which then by cable's monopoly power has forced cable television subscribers to pay increasingly higher prices to receive television content 90% of which for 30+ years used to come to them absolutely free -- for the price of owning a television set and an antenna that could pick-up broadcast television signals "in the free and open air".

As has been observed by others elsewhere (Note to self: cite some!), it is as if the richest stakeholders in using the Internet for commercial purposes are trying to recreate "commercial and cable television" type providing of as much of the Internet content as possible, with the imposition of increasingly "cute" and "flashy", but equally dumbed-down, simplistic, intentionally (perhaps propagandistically) distorted, semi-hypnotic Internet content that is also minimal interactivity -- keeping the Internet end-user almost as passive as have been radio, television, and cable tv users for decades!

This in fact is what all we regular Internet users now experience most of the time, I dare say, when we use our Internet browser programs to view most Internet web pages as well as the increasing amounts of Internet-streamed radio and television programs, popular music, and digital versions of films.  If the commercial interests succeed in dominating content, affordability, and the speed and quality of delivery to us of Internet content, they will also force us to view and hear relentless advertising on almost every web page, or along with every web audio or video stream, we choose to look at, listen to or read.

And that degradation and commercialization of the Internet will include anything that is "truly" and officially educational.  Will the educational materials themselves be similarly distorted to serve the interests of those with the most money and power to control those messages and learning experiences?  At the present day, by my interpretation of present trends, I fear they will.