With Internet wars, journalist Natalia Zuazo seeks to demolish misconceptions about the internet's intricate network.
“We have to understand the Internet wars. Because we are a part of them”.
Published in 2015 by Debate, Guerras de internet reveals the truth behind the functioning of technologies that rule our lives every day a little bit more.
As an argentine citizen, I was unaware of my country's internet capital as many of my friends were, and I bet most of the people around the world don't know where are the main bases of the internet located.
That's right, it is not a fancy "cloud" as we would wish it to be. They are all cables and those cables have owners. Natalia Zuazo not only explains the technical details and jargon of the Internet but its political and economic side as well.
The world has changed a lot since I was a child. Nowadays, kids grow up in an already connected world, together with the dangers it might bring.
The author highlights today's generation gap (as big as ever) and claims to belong to the last generation who has lived in both worlds: before the internet and after.
Will technology solve all our problems? Is the invasion of our privacy the cost we must pay? Is destroying secrets the new form of activism today? Is our blind acceptance of terms and conditions a political action or just a lazy one?
Our bank accounts, our sex preferences, who our friends are, our job profiles, the travel destinations we look at. The internet search engines know more about ourselves than our families do.
As the author puts it: for clients, the "cloud" is a synonym of trust. It is also used for not explaining its complexity.
Natalia Zuazo extracts an interesting idea from Raymond Williams: with every technological advancement affecting modern communications there are always two simultaneous changes. The first one is the invention by itself, which affects time and space, the second is the uses the society gives to the new technology. The later, according to Raymond Williams, is what affects our world: new institutions, new forms of social relationships and new ways of thinking.
The importance of equality and neutrality of contents has been put to test these last years as well as the so-called "democratization of culture". The risk of protecting some rights leads to the limitation of others.
So what will be able to compose our collective knowledge online if some people are still deprived of Internet access?
Is the Internet, as Julian Assange put it, an instrument of emancipation or totalitarism?
After all, internet was born out of fear of threats in the sixties and towards the end of the seventies, the network was expanding through four main regions: Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Boston and Washington, the main academic and military centers of the United States.
The journalist states that it is necessary to understand how the Internet works before submitting to it.
I would say this book had to be written at some point and it is well balanced between a global view and a Latin-American perspective. Many of the cases that appear on the book are related to Argentina and Brazil, and the political influence they try to achieve. However, trying to counteract the extent of the United State's influence would mean to ask all their citizens to stop being Google, Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Whats App or Instagram users. A highly unlikely and costly move.
The truth is the majority of internet users don't care or prefer to ignore just how much they are being vigilated.
Natalia Zuazo's proposal is not to follow technologies blindly and religiously even though the loss of privacy is and will be inevitable. She looks for our responsibilities not only as consumers but as citizens who know their rights and should exercise them.
Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash
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