Screened out

If one fact sums up the strange cultural shifts of the Noughties, it is this: if you Google the word ‘book’, the first result you get is ‘Facebook’.

Net gains

From Craigslist to the Iranian protests, the Webby Awards pick the 10 most influential internet moments of the Noughties.

The end of the world as we know it

In the Conclusion to The Noughties, I indulge in a little amateur futurology, while acknowledging that such a practice leaves the author open to any amount of retrospective embarrassment. I wonder how, in four decades’ time, we’ll perceive Michael Hanlon’s Daily Mail article on the perils of the Internet:

It is a Britain, indeed a world, where the private individual has ceased to exist, and one in which an unholy alliance of the state and Mammon rules our lives with powers that would have made Stalin sick with envy.

Fear and technology indeed...

Comin’ back atcha

Cory Doctorow on the British government’s ‘three-strikes-and-you’re-out’ proposals for dealing with illegal downloaders and other copyright violators:

To understand just how disproportionate this is, consider the corollary: what if Peter Mandelson proposed a rule to terminate the internet access of any movie studio or record company accused of three baseless copyright claims against the public? We could go down to all Universal offices and data centres with a huge pair of boltcutters and snip its net wires at the junction box.

Rewriting the script

Not so much a Noughties story, more one for the teens and onwards: Icann’s decision to allow non-Latin web addresses will at a stroke shift the global balance of power to what we still call the developing world. The next question is: at what point will English cease to be the default global language? See Chapter Nine.

Quids in (or out)

The economic shift that has led to great swathes of the media spending the Noughties in a sort of panicky inertia: online advertising spend in the UK finally outstrips TV.

Here’s looking at you

Chapter Six of The Noughties deals with the surveillance culture that pervaded the decade, usually justified with the homily “If you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear.” The weirdest development was the extent to which the distinction between private and public space became confused; and people seemed delighted to offer themselves up for intimate scrutiny in the name of fortune and fame.

Now, entertainment and money meet invasion of privacy once again in the form of Internet Eyes, a game of sorts, that streams live CCTV footage to the home computers of players. Spot a crime being committed, and win £1,000. Michael Laurie of Crimestoppers is unimpressed: “While the motive may be sound, the concept of Internet Eyes seems to ask more questions than it answers,” he says.