I have lost all joy in writing on the blog. This loss is due, in part, to my overall desire to reduce as much as possible my digital footprint on the Web. And this has been motivated by revelation after revelation of how the Web and all its various services have been weaponized to be used against us. Whether it’s all the Facebook exposes about the lack of control over your personal information (which has been ongoing since at least 2008) or the use of Twitter as a platform for hate, or just the general use now of trawling for any information to be twisted and then used against an opponant, the Web has mutated since the late 1990s from a level playing field initially and naively meant to foster freedom and communication into a Balkanized series of “platforms” that have evolved into frighteningly effective propaganda weapons, weapons that are used on a massive scale to silence, intimidate and control. And we help, and have helped by willingly giving up all of our personal information.

I’m done. The experiment with the Internet has run its course with me, and it’s a total failure. It’s beyond repair, and the founders of this mess, like Tim Berners Lee, can go choke on their pontificating about how we need to keep the Net free. The net was never free, requiring considerable (and considerably expensive) hardware and software just to make it all work. The bill comes due no matter what you may think, and it was our privacy and general freedoms that have been traded to be a part of this (as well as being charged outrageous monthly fees to our “service providers” [sic]).

Good luck and thanks for all the fish.