Gratus D.

I started using the internet with a low speed modem that made loud beeping sounds that annoyed the entire household. The phone line would get cut off, and the speeds would be slow. Information, plain text only, would arrive slowly. Over the years the internet emerged as a technological innovation that revolutionized the way people spent their time - from social media, to online gaming, to eBay and Amazon. Google changed the way we find information, eToro and the like changed the way we invest money, Amazon changed the way we buy goods; we track parcels online, we check in to locations with our mobile phones, we keep track of our homes using the internet-of-things. I am glad to have developed code for the internet for 15 years - starting at a time where html was still written by hand (or Frontpage - remember Frontpage?) to hold text information, with the occasional gif and now debunked blinking text; progressing through the era of Flash which promised browser compatibility at the cost of breaking the premise of the internet; to Google and the ensuring wild dash for SEO. Now everything we built needs to be backed by AI and feed into a Machine Learning pipeline. If you are not capturing data you missing something. The internet, built as a communications platform, has turned into a giant monster that is consuming our life - figuratively by occupying our attendion, and literally, as AI engines require our mundane life information as food to grow. The way tobacco industry met cancer, and oil met environmentalists, the internet is now raising questions about health, community, privacy, and society in general. Skynet is real, and so far has been helping us - now we need to make sure we build the Holodeck instead of the Terminator.