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spacetimewithstuartgary · 3 months ago

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New Horizons spacecraft measurements shed light on the darkness of the universe

Just how dark is deep space? Astronomers may have finally answered this long-standing question by tapping into the capabilities and distant position of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, by making the most precise, direct measurements ever of the total amount of light the universe generates.

More than 18 years after launch and nine years after its historic exploration of Pluto, New Horizons is more than 5.4 billion miles (7.3 billion kilometers) from Earth, in a region of the solar system far enough from the sun to offer the darkest skies available to any existing telescope—and to provide a unique vantage point from which to measure the overall brightness of the distant universe.

"If you hold up your hand in deep space, how much light does the universe shine on it?" asked Marc Postman, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and lead author of a new paper detailing the research, which was published August 28 in The Astrophysical Journal.

"We now have a good idea of just how dark space really is. The results show that the great majority of visible light we receive from the universe was generated in galaxies. Importantly, we also found that there is no evidence for significant levels of light produced by sources not presently known to astronomers."

The findings solve a puzzle that has perplexed scientists since the 1960s, when astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered that space is pervaded by strong microwave radiation, which had been predicted to be left over from the creation of the universe itself.

This result led to their being awarded the Nobel Prize. Subsequently, astronomers also found evidence of backgrounds of X-rays, gamma rays and infrared radiation that also fill the sky.

Detecting the background of "ordinary" (or visible) light—more formally called the cosmic optical background, or COB—provided a way to add up all the light generated by galaxies over the lifetime of the universe before NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope could see the faint background galaxies directly.

In the Hubble and James Webb telescope era, astronomers measure the COB to detect light that might come from sources other than these known galaxies. But measuring the total light output of the universe is extremely difficult from Earth or anywhere in the inner solar system.

"People have tried over and over to measure it directly, but in our part of the solar system, there's just too much sunlight and reflected interplanetary dust that scatters the light around into a hazy fog that obscures the faint light from the distant universe," said Tod Lauer, a New Horizons co-investigator, astronomer from the National Science Foundation NOIRLab in Tucson, Arizona, and a co-author of the new paper. "All attempts to measure the strength of the COB from the inner solar system suffer from large uncertainties."

Enter New Horizons, billions of miles along its trek beyond the planets, now deep in the Kuiper Belt and headed toward interstellar space. Late last summer, from a distance 57 times farther from the sun than Earth, New Horizons scanned the universe with its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), collecting two-dozen separate imaging fields.

LORRI itself was intentionally shielded from the sun by the main body of the spacecraft—keeping even the dimmest sunlight from directly entering the sensitive camera—and the target fields were positioned away from the bright disk and core of the Milky Way and nearby bright stars.

The New Horizons observers used other data, taken in the far-infrared by the European Space Agency's Planck mission, of fields with a range in dust density to calibrate the level of those far-infrared emissions to the level of ordinary visible light.

This allowed them to accurately predict and correct for the presence of dust-scattered Milky Way light in the COB images—a technique that was not available to them during a 2021 test COB observation run with New Horizons in which they underestimated the amount of dust-scattered light and overestimated excess light from the universe itself.

But this time around, after accounting for all known sources of light, such as background stars and light scattered by thin clouds of dust within the Milky Way galaxy, the researchers found the remaining level of visible light was entirely consistent with the intensity of light generated by all galaxies over the past 12.6 billion years.

"The simplest interpretation is that the COB is completely due to galaxies," Lauer said. "Looking outside the galaxies, we find darkness there and nothing more."

"This newly published work is an important contribution to fundamental cosmology, and really something that could only be done with a far-away spacecraft like New Horizons," said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

"And it shows that our current extended mission is making important scientific contributions far beyond the original intent of this planetary mission designed to make the first close spacecraft explorations of Pluto and Kuiper Belt objects."

Launched in January 2006, New Horizons made the historic reconnaissance of Pluto and its moons in July 2015, before giving humankind its first close-up look at a planetary building block and Kuiper Belt object, Arrokoth, in January 2019.

New Horizons is now in its second extended mission, imaging distant Kuiper Belt objects, characterizing the outer heliosphere of the sun, and making important astrophysical observations from its unmatched vantage point in the farthest regions of the solar system.

IMAGE: An artist's impression of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft against the backdrop of deep space. The lane of our Milky Way galaxy is in the background. Credit: NASA, APL, SwRI, Serge Brunier (ESO), Marc Postman (STScI), Dan Durda

#science #space #astronomy #physics #news #nasa #astrophysics

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autoacafiles · 1 year ago

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So this has been something that's been asked for a few times, so after a long times work, here we have it! A hypothetical voice cast for the characters of Autobot Academy. If there's a character you don't see, it's as we don't want to rush figuring out a character. We may update this list in the future, however it'll be in our own time, so we won't be taking any questions about specific missing characters. And hey, if you have your own voices that don't match up with these, then feel free to stick with that!

Autobots

Yuri Lowenthal - Hot Shot/Excellion II/DF Hot Shot/Ben Tennyson

Ashley Eckstein - Lightbright/Maxima/DF Lightbright

Tara Platt - Artillery/Maelstrom/ CG-11272017

ThunderPsyker - Bumblebee/Mjolnir

Morgan Garrett - Arcee/Diabla/Spidarcee

Nick “Lanipator” Landis - Rampage/Shockaract/Straxus

Brianna Knickerbocker - Transmutate/Transmutate X/Transmutate IX

Sam Vincent - Side Burn/Darkburn

Rick “Rice Pirate” Lauer - X-Brawn/Wrenchit

Chris Hackney - Mach Alert/Infernox/Lio Convo/Galva Convoy

Tiya Sicrar - Moonracer

Christine Marie Cabanos - Nightracer/Wipe-Out

Ashley Johnson - Glyph

Kanono - Tap-Out/AlbinoBug

Lizzie Caplin - Tremor/Shockblast

Erika Ishii - Sonar/Noisemaze

DoktorApplejuice - Armorhide/Armorbreak

Josh Keaton - Sideswipe/Firebreaker/Sunstreaker/Mismatch

Alejandro Saab - Steeljaw/Shatter-Pattern/Phantomjaw/Hellhound

Chris Miller - Thunderhoof

Sumalee Montano - Lodestar

Max Mittelan - Hosehead/Contagion

Sam Regal - Bomb-Burst

Kyle McCarley - Longshot

Ben Diskin - Misfire/Missilefire

Lucas Gilbertson - Saber/Dark Saber/Devcon/DF Devcon

Li Ming Hu - Hightail/Ravager

Mike Ginn - Gridlock/Ravager

Erica Mendez - Galaxy Flare

Michelle Ang - Riptide

Vanessa Marshal - Strongarm

Jill Harris - Nautica/DF Nautica

Courtney Ford - Muzzle

Nicolas Cantu - Wasp/DF Waspinator

Erin Fitzgerald - Convex

Archie Kao - Roadblock

Connor Kelley - Sky High

Haven Kendrick - Hot Rodimus/Raze

Michelle Yeoh - Windblade

Shannon McCormick - Rung

Elizabeth Maxwell - Chromia

Edward James Olmos - Fortress Maximus

Travis Willingham - Rollout

Andrew Francis - Scorch

John DiMaggio - Kup/Nitro Zeus/Leadfoot

Kyle Herbert - Star Convoy/Orion Pax/Toxitron

Mark Bonnar - Starscream

Paul McGann - Perceptor

Jake Johnson - Devaron

Herself Sarah Wiedenheft - Saperion/Arcrunner

Debra Wilson - Elita-1

Nicolas Cage - Overload

Nathan Fillion - Silverstreak/Killstreak

Ian MacKellen - Alpha Trion

Maximals

Tara Strong - Slash

Bryce Papenbrooke - Leobreaker

Matt Mercer - Bigfight/Death Convoy

Tom Gliblis - Break

Aleks Le - Stampy

Jack DeSana - Whoop-Kong

Roger Craig Smith - Bound Rogue

Charlie Day - Rattrap

Protectobots

Ashly Burch - Whirl

Heather Watson - Minerva

Aerialbots

Ratana - Stiletto

Cherami Leigh - Skyburst/Stormclash

Rachel Robinson - Surge

David B. Mitchell - Silverbolt

Axellerators

Jamie Chung - Flare-Up

Ron Botitta - Amp

Decepticons

Jason Marnocha - Megatron

Isaac C Singleton Jr. - Soundwave

Kathleen Delaney - Thunderblast

Vincent D'nofrio - Motormaster

Laura Bailey - Drag Strip

Shelby Rabara - Wildrider

David Kaye - Gnashteeth

Marc "Ganxingba" Soskin - Thundercracker

Ian Hanlin - Skywarp

Ryan Reynolds - Deadlock

Kaley Cuoco - Flamewar

Todd Haberkorn - Stonecrusher

Maurice LaMarche- Cryotek

Josh Powell - Onslaught

Corey Burton - Shockwave

Sylvester McCoy - “Doc”

JK Simmons - Horntrap

Resistance

Cameron Monaghan - Beta Maxx

Neo-Maximals

LaMonica Garret - Great Convoy

Peter Dinklage - King Atlas

Lydia Leonard - Black Convoy

Sam Witwer - Venator

Others

Colin Baker - Jhiaxus

Billy West/Michael Dorn - Dion/Umbra Convoy

Greg Cipes - Carjack

#Extra Information #Voice Cast

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wouldntyou-liketoknow · 1 year ago

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Masterpost

What’s up? I’m 22, autistic, omniromantic-demisexual, and use She/Her pronouns. Storytelling is really important to me, and the stuff I make is almost always dark, unhinged, and macabre.

This is a list of all the stories I’ve written so far (and I’ll be making updates in time with future stories). The characters I mainly write for are YouTuber Egos; those of Nathan Sharp/NateWantsToBattle, Markiplier, MatPat, Thomas Sanders, etc.

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T̅̈ͥhe P̥e̵n̶̬̬t̲̲ä́͘s͈͈͢ Fͤãm̼i̥lͩy̜ [Tͥh̴ͦ͠e̸̸̥ F̻́utu͒́́r͂e͖͒̐ M͙oͦb̬̈́̒ P̠̩̕r͛͋̈́ȯj͇e̤c̴t̾̇]

The Pentas Family Encyclopedia

Murdock Mallory (My personal headcanons)

(Goretober 2022) Day 2: Cannibalism (Caliban, Murdock, The Newcomer)

Running on Empty (Caliban, Murdock, R.D.)

God, Being an Accessory to Murder is Exhausting (Sam Ryder, Murdock, Caliban)

What’s That Saying About Cinnamon Rolls. . ? (Azalea, Caliban)

Update the Letter Board! (Azalea, Murdock)

Toxic Tutorials (Azalea, The Newcomer)

(Goretober 2023) Day 3: Broken Bones (K.O., Murdock, Caliban)

(Goretober 2023) Day 4: Amputation (Caliban, Murdock, R.D.)

(Goretober 2023) Day 7: Needles (Azalea, Murdock, Caliban, K.O.)

HALLOWEEN 2023 SPECIAL: Bloody Tricks and Even Bloodier Treats (Sam Ryder, Azalea, K.O., Murdock, Caliban)

(Goretober 2024) Day 2: Operation (Murdock, K.O.)

(Goretober 2024) Day 4: Burst Vessels (Garret Wyre, The Newcomer)

(Goretober 2024) Day 5: Submerged (Parker Thenope, Murdock)

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Fǎ̘nm͌ad̗e̋ͭ̑ E̍͞g̾ös̀͌

Caliban Crawford (My EgoPat)

Azalea Crawford (My Nerdy Nummies Ego)

K.O./Kaiser Oasis (My CrankEgo)

Garret Wyre (My Mick Lauer Ego)

Parker Thenope (My Nathan Sharp/NWTB Ego)

Val Ocitie (My Lio Tipton Ego)

Two-Toes Johnny/Johnathan Shine (My Muyskerm Ego)

Phoenix Rhong (My Safiya Nygaard Ego)

Miles C. Peyote and Howie Thetaxi (My Dawko and 8-BitRyan Egos)

Jay Aienyouess (My Thomas Sanders Ego)

The Newcomer

R.D. (My StephEgo)

……….

S̹̫t̥a̖͔ṉ̡́̚͠n̗̦̝̘͒̓͞in̵̬ͧ́̈́̌̕g̡̫͂ͮ͜ T͌h̸e̲ͤ̚ͅ Un̬͉̓͊̎̓ca̶̙̰ͩͮ͜ṉ̡͓ͬny͇͌͌͞͡

Cruz Freitas (A LixianEgo that I made as a gift for @sammys-magical-au ; one of my Semi-Cultist characters)

Sol Magee (An Ash Ego; specifically one of my Semi-Cultists)

LeviathanPat (another EgoPat of mine)

Sylphanie/Sylph (another StephEgo of mine)

Moses Norbert and ColosSeptic (An CrankEgo and SepticEgo; respectively one of my Semi-Cultists and Abomination-Ego)

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C̛̪ͤasͩ̓u̜ảl͈ Fį̙͜c̚sͥ͊

From Candygram to Requiem (Noah Walker and the Paranormal Investigators from Random Encounter’s Phasmophobia The Musical)

What’s a Detective Without a Case? (Noir!Engineer Mark, Noir!Mack, Noir!Captain)

Nobody Likes Rude Clients (Patty, Delux/Porniplier)

Caught Between a Monstrosity and An Abomination (EldritchPlier, LeviathanPat, The Reader)

Just Another Night at Sparky’s (Ness, Jack, Mason)

When a Tomb Becomes a Womb (Part 1: Rings) (The Creature/Callum, Lisa Swallows)

When a Tomb Becomes a Womb (Part 2: Honeymoon) (The Creature/Callum, Lisa Swallows)

There Are Some Cons to Being an Archeologist... (Penn/Pennsylvania James, Illinois, LeviathanPat)

A Couple Nights Later. . . (Penn/Pennsylvania James, Illinois, Caliban, Azalea, Murdock)

It Might as Well Happen! Life is Already So (Old) God(s)damn Weird! (Cruz, EldritchPlier, Penn/Pennsylvania James, Illinois, Sam Ryder)

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S͂̋̕eͨ̓r͈ͣ̄ieͮs͔̃̓ Fi̹̅cs̋

……….

Terminal Case of the Ol' Switcheroo (a crack-crossover that @insane4fandoms and I are collaborating on, where I write snippets to attach to the comics they draw. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the FNAF Movie's own Ness was mistaken for MadPat and abducted by my EgoPat, Caliban. Now the two of them are working together in a race to track down Mad and catch him before he can harm the Schmidt family.)

Part 1 (Ness, Caliban, MadPat, Mike Schmidt)

Part 2 (Ness, Caliban, R.D., MadPat, Mike Schmidt)

Part 3 (Ness, Caliban, MadPat, Mike Schmidt)

Part 4 (Ness, Caliban, MadPat, Mike Schmidt, Jack/Cabbie!Cory, Abby Schmidt)

Epilogue (Ness, Jack/Cabbie!Cory, Mike Schmidt, Abby Schmidt, Caliban, MadPat, Murdock, The Newcomer)

..........

My Goretober Ventures So Far. . .

……….

Gifts for a Bat (an ongoing saga of snippets based off of @that-bat’s awesome Resident Evil: Village AU, where the mutated personifications of Nate, Mark and Matt are Lords serving under Mother Miranda and Ethan Nestor/CrankGamePlays is playing the role of Ethan Winters.)

Part 1: A Spider-Human Monster and A Necromancer Walk Into a Bar… (Nate/Lord Ophio, Matt/Lord Loxosceles)

Part 2: Chaos, Compromises, and Meal-Prep (Ethan Nestor-Winters, Matt/Lord Loxosceles, Mark/Lord Isurus)

Part 3: A New Face In Town (Nate/Lord Ophio, Hunter/The Baron)

……….

The Sides of A Nightmare (short drabbles inspired by @fangirltothefullest’s amazing Sanders Sides Little Nightmares AU)

The Actor (Creativity “Roman” Sanders/Red, Character!Thomas Sanders)

The Professor (Logic “Logan” Sanders/Indigo, Creativity “Roman” Sanders/Red, Character!Thomas Sanders)

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R̸̨̾a̝̒ͣn̮͒͡d̔̈́o̗͇m̜ J͔u͔͞n̤ͥ̕k͋

My EgoPats Meeting the Canon EgoPats

My EgoPats Meeting the Canon EgoPats (Brought To You by Incorrect Quotes)

Incorrect Quotes: ISWM (Parts 1 and 2) Edition

Incorrect Quotes: ISWM Edition (The Second One)

How Mack Snapped and Became the Way He Is in Part Two

ISWM Meets Pokemon

Matt and Ro are Soul-Siblings, So…

Matt and Ro Are Soul-Siblings, So... (But It's Kinda Dark This Time)

Headcanons for Phantom and Monarch Being Allies(?) Since Nate and Amanda Are Friends

Characters and Headcanons and References, Oh My!

What’s This? Natemare is EVOLVING!

I’d Like To Adopt These Side-Characters, Please (And Also Make One Arbitrarily To Appease The Vibes)

RE8 AU Incorrect Quotes

How a Lot of My Followers Probably Reacted to My Hyperfixation on Caliban

RE8 AU Incorrect Quotes [Part 2]

A Fictional AI Argument That No-One Asked For

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deep-dive · 2 years ago

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2022

albums: Alex G - God Save the Animals Alex G - We're All Going to the World's Fair Anthony Naples + DJ Python - Air Texture VIII Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You Björk - Fossora Bladee & Ecco2k - Crest Broadcast - Maida Vale Sessions Carla dal Forno - Come Around Carly Rae Jepsen - The Loneliest Time Cass McCombs - Heartmind Charli XCX - Crash Daphni - Cherry Dawn Richard & Spencer Zahn - Pigments Hikaru Utada - Bad Mode Huerco S. - Plonk Isabella Lovestory - Amor Hardcore Junior Boys - Waiting Game Kali Malone - Living Torch Malibu - Palaces of Pity Marina Herlop - Pripyat Oren Ambarchi - Shebang Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling & Andreas Werliin - Ghosted Organ Tapes - 唱着那无人问津的歌谣 / Chang Zhe Na Wu Ren Wen Jin De Ge Yao Phoenix - Alpha Zulu Physical Therapy - Teardrops on My Garage PPJ - Trindade Rachika Nayar - Heaven Come Crashing Raum - Daughter Sally Shapiro - Sad Cities Sam Prekop - The Sparrow Sam Prekop & John McEntire - Sons Of Shinichi Atobe - Love of Plastic Shygirl - Nymph The Soft Pink Truth - Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This? Torus & DJ Lostboi - The Flash Two Shell - Icons The Weeknd - Dawn FM William Basinski & Janek Schaefer - “ . . . On Reflection “

songs: Alex G - JLB's Drawing Bibio - Off Goes the Light Björk - Ancestress (ft. Sindri Eldon) Bladee & Ecco2k - Faust Bladee & Ecco2k - The Flag is Raised Call Super - Swallow Me Carla dal Forno - Side by Side Carly Rae Jepsen - Anxious Carly Rae Jepsen - Talking to Yourself Cass McCombs - Belong to Heaven CFCF - After the After (Bodysync Remix) Charli XCX - Sorry If I Hurt You Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul - Haha Coco & Clair Clair - Bad Lil Vibe Cole Pulice - City in a City Daphni - Take Two Dawn Richard & Spencer Zahn - Sandstone Demi Lovato - Substance DJ Heartstring - Can't Stop the Night Doss - Look (All Night Mix) Doss - Strawberry (Singin' Club Mix) Double Virgo - Kicked Out by Seven Ecco2k & Bladee - Amygdala Ela Minus & DJ Python - Pájaros En Verano Embaci - Tiniest Whisper Hikaru Utada - Somewhere Near Marseilles Hudson Mohawke - Bicstan Isabella Lovestory - Exibisionista Job - Lore Junior Boys - Thinking About You Calms Me Down Kelela - On the Run Luis - Jack Anderson Malibu - Iliad Marina Herlop - Abans Abans Merely - The Killing Sun Mr Twin Sister - Resort Mura Masa & Erika de Casier - e-motions Objekt - Ballast Oren Ambarchi - I Organ Tapes - Burnout Organ Tapes - heaven can wait Physical Therapy - Chain Reaction PinkPantheress - Boy's a liar PPJ - Dar Um (Lauer Remix) Purelink - Butterfly Jam Rachika Nayar - Gayatri Raum - Walk together Sally Shapiro - Sad City SG Lewis & Tove Lo - Call on Me (SG's Dub Edit) Shinichi Atobe - Love of Plastic 1 Shygirl - Firefly Two Shell - Unrequited Yasmine - Doce Atração Yung Lean - Lips Yves Tumor - God Is a Circle

games: Elden Ring Kirby and the Forgotten Land Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak Signalis Sonic Frontiers Squaredle Tactics Ogre: Reborn

film: Aftersun (Charlotte Wells) Ambulance (Michael Bay) Avatar: The Way of Water (James Cameron) Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg) Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook) I Thought the World of You (Kurt Walker) Jackass Forever (Jeff Tremaine) Kimi (Steven Soderbergh) Nope (Jordan Peele) Orphan: First Kill (William Brent Bell) Pacifiction (Albert Serra) Sharp Stick (Lena Dunham) Stars at Noon (Claire Denis) Tár (Todd Field) Three Thousand Years of Longing (George Miller)

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4godownunder · 1 year ago

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Samstag, 5. August 2023

Ein Kilo Pommes zu verschenken

Nachdem wir am Freitag erst im Dunkeln angekommen waren, wird am Samstagmorgen erstmal der kleine Holiday Park gesichtet, in dem wir kurzfristig für 135 Euro die Nacht unseren 3-Schlafzimmer-Bungalow gebucht haben. Allerliebst. Eine wirklich kleine Anlage, mit Spielplatz, Pool, Trampolin, Tennisplatz (samt Schlägern und Bällen), BBQ, die liebevoll von zwei Herren gepflegt und verwaltet wird.

Zwar würde es einen schönen langen Weg am Meer entlang geben - aber wir sind doch wegen der Seen hier! Also zuckeln wir erstmal zum Captain Hawke Lookout, zu dem es vom Parkplatz erstmal 20 Minuten bergauf geht. Dann nochmal auf einen kleinen Aussichtsturm und wir bekommen einen ersten Überblick, auch wenn wir vor allem Baumwipfel sehen. Das Meer rauscht laut im Hintergrund, James Cook selbst hatte dem Kap im Jahr 1770 den Namen gegeben.

Wir zuckeln am Booti Booti Nationalpark entlang, halten am 7-Mile-Beach und verweilen. Schwimmen wäre natürlich wieder nicht, diesmal wegen Strömung. Aber der Sand quietscht unter den Sandalen, im Sand selbst verbergen sich Muscheln, es gibt viel zu entdecken und die Temperatur ist gerade angenehm. Auch wenn wir auf der anderen Straßenseite schon die ganze Zeit einen See haben, sehen wir wegen der Bäume nichts davon. Aber wir steuern das Frothy Coffee an, am Smith Lake. Und da läuft auf einmal nichts mehr nach Plan...

... denn ursprünglich sollte es hier Kaffee geben. Kaffee. Aber mit einem Teenager nahe dem Hungertod an der Seite entgleist die Bestellung irgendwie. Am Ende stehen drei dicke Burger samt Pommes, Tintenfisch mit Pommes und eine Extraportion Pommes auf dem Tisch - die junge Dame an der Kasse hatte unsere Bestellung nicht nur zwischenzeitlich komplett vergessen gehabt, sondern auch überhört, dass die großen Pommes die anderen ersetzen sollten. Nunja. In einem Behälter nehmen wir die Restpommes mit, der Mietwagen riecht den restlichen Tag wie eine Frittenbude.

Mehr als gesättigt beobachten wir noch eine Weile einen Angler, der Jesus-gleich über das Wasser zu laufen scheint. Einen Lachenden Hans, der so garnicht scheu ist. Und den schönen See. Dann geht es zurück, mit einem Stopp an der Green Cathedral am Wallis Lake. Die Andachtsstätte ist inmitten einen Palmenwaldes gelegt und hat wirklich eine wunderbare Atmosphäre. Auf dem Rückweg fahren wir einmal über die Brücke nach Tuncurry. Dort haben wir viel Spaß bei der Beobachtung eines kleinen Schwarms Pelikane, die bei einem Fischer auf der Lauer liegen. Danach trudeln wir wieder in unserem Häuschen ein. Louisa und Nicole stürmen den Pool (Solarbeheizt, 29 Grad!).

Gegen 16.30 wird die Reiseleitung ungemütlich: Die Sonne geht bald unter und der Vermieter hatte doch gesagt, dass abends die Delfine in die Bucht schwimmen ... Also schauen wir erst zum Strand, dann zur Bucht. Kleine Jungs heizen mit ihren Rädern am Wasser entlang, das Fahrrad eines Vaters fällt eine Mauer herunter und wird wieder hochgeholt und irgendwo steht wieder ein aufstrebender Künster herum und streamt sich gerade vor attraktiver Kulisse, auch wenn seiner Gitarre wirklich niemand zuhört. Wir beobachten wieder Pelikane, hören den ohrenbetäubenden Lärm von Vögeln auf der Suche nach dem Schlafplatz - aber Delfine sehen wir keine. Sonnenuntergang fällt wegen der Wolken auch aus.

Zum Abendessen zeigt sich, dass das Mittagessen wirklich mächtig war. Die Eltern halten sich an Toast und Salat. Louisa bastelt sich einen Joghurt mit Obst. Und sogar Kilian löffelt nur Joghurt. Falls jemand ein Kilo Pommes braucht: Wir hätten da welche.

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ulkaralakbarova · 4 months ago

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An unemployed pot-smoking slacker and amateur drummer, Anthony Stoner ditches his strict parents and hits the road, eventually meeting kindred spirit Pedro de Pacas. While the drug-ingesting duo is soon arrested for possession of marijuana, Anthony and Pedro get released on a technicality, allowing them to continue their many misadventures and ultimately compete in a rock band contest, where they perform the raucous tune “Earache My Eye.” Credits: TheMovieDb. Film Cast: Pedro De Pacas: Cheech Marin Anthony ‘Man’ Stoner: Tommy Chong Arnold Stoner: Strother Martin Mrs. Tempest Stoner: Edie Adams Chauffeur: Harold Fong Richard: Richard Novo Jail Bait: Jane Moder Jail Bait: Pam Bille Arresting Officer: Arthur Roberts Strawberry: Tom Skerritt Sgt. Stedenko (Narc): Stacy Keach Laughing Lady: Cheryl Smith Harry: Mills Watson The Hoods: Factory Boss: Val Avery Officer Gloria Whitey: Louisa Moritz Jade East: Zane Buzby Rodney Bingenheimer: Rodney Bingenheimer James: Raymond Vitte Roxy Doorman: David Nelson Film Crew: Director: Lou Adler Editor: Scott Conrad Director of Photography: Gene Polito Writer: Cheech Marin Writer: Tommy Chong Associate Producer: John Beug Casting: Monica Lauer Art Direction: Leon Ericksen Makeup Artist: Wes Dawn Hairstylist: Lola ‘Skip’ McNalley Producer: Lou Lombardo Movie Reviews: Filipe Manuel Neto: **A good example of how irresponsible and careless cinema can be when it wants to convey messages to the public.** I have already said, in other reviews of other films, that I see cinema as a leisure experience and as a form of artistic expression. At its core, this is cinema. However, there are so many films that seek to indoctrinate and convey political or social messages that it is not easy for us to forget that the industrial and propaganda machine linked to the movies is perfect for the mass “brainwashing” of crowds. It’s something I don’t like and it’s even dangerous, taking into account that it can be used for good or bad, depending on the message being conveyed. And the message that this film sends us is one of tremendous social irresponsibility! Released in 1978, at a time when American cinema still felt the strong influence of hippies and the ideals of a libertarian and counterculture Left, the film begins by revealing two very different characters (a poor Latino and a well-born and spoiled rich man) who unite in their love for drugs, and especially marijuana (or weed). The script is non-existent and underwritten: the characters limit themselves to an incessant and eager search for more and more drugs, ending up returning from Mexico with a van made of weed and leaving a trail of smoke and people accidentally stoned, and apparently very happy with that. The film is one of those films that Hollywood should be ashamed of: it is a great apology for the consumption, liberal and recreational, of a varied cocktail of drugs, which starts with weed and ends with acids, “speeds” and heroin. The amount of substances mentioned in the film is vast and the way in which the subject is approached should have led to legal actions and arrest warrants against the actors, producers, studio and director, in order to answer for this irresponsible and inconsequential movie. And if the reader finds that too drastic, I leave you the question: would it be reasonable or good that they had released a comedy that made a sympathetic or pleasant portrayal of Nazism, or the Holocaust? Yes, one thing has nothing to do with the other! But there are reasonable limits for everything, including comedy, and there are themes that are simply not meant to make people laugh. I don’t mean by this to say that I think the film was instrumental in increasing drug use, or that all the people who saw it went out and bought some weed. But if we, as a society, start to allow certain reprehensible acts and behaviors to be seen in a careless way, this gradually becomes ingrained in people’s minds. In addition to this issue of moral and social irresponsibility, the film also has a perfect bad taste humor: ...

#buddy #drug mule #drug trafficking #drugs #ecstasy #friendship bracelet #hitchhike #joint #marijuana #smoking #Top Rated Movies

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moviereviews101web · 7 months ago

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The Seductress from Hell (2024) Movie Review

The Seductress from Hell – Movie Review Director: Andrew de Burgh (The Bestowal) Writer: Andrew de Burgh (Screenplay) Cast Jason Faunt (Power Rangers Time Force) James Hyde Andy Lauer (Iron Man 3) Rocio Scotto Raj Jawa (Free Guy) Kylie Rohrer Plot: A Hollywood actress undergoes a horrific transformation after being pushed to the edge by her psychopathic husband. Runtime: 1 Hour 42…

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#2024 #Horror #The Seductress from Hell

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xtruss · 10 months ago

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Can The Internet Be Governed?

Amid Worries About What Big Tech is Doing to Our Privacy, Politics, and Psyches, Many Stakeholders—From Activists to Technocrats—are Calling For a New Rule Book.

— By Akash Kapur | January 29, 2024

Will the Internet harden into an Oligarchic Playground or become something like a Digital Public Utility? Will it bend to the power of tyrants—or provide a resource for resisting them? Illustration By Till Lauer

On A Cold Night in February of 1996, John Perry Barlow found himself at a party in Davos. It was the closing event of the World Economic Forum, and the ballroom was filled with besuited masters of the universe and students from the University of Geneva. He danced with them, a little inebriated. But a thought nagged at him.

Earlier that day, in Washington, D.C., President Clinton had signed a bill that would for the first time bring the Internet under a degree of government control. The Communications Decency Act (C.D.A.), part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, included a provision that would criminalize “obscene” or “indecent” content on the Internet. In Congress, the Nebraska senator James Exon, who had co-sponsored the C.D.A., issued a dire warning: “Barbarian pornographers are at the gate, and they are using the Internet to gain access to the youth of America.” As evidence, he circulated a blue binder filled with pornographic material collected online, including an image of a man having sex with a German shepherd.

Barlow, a former cattle rancher from Wyoming, a sometime lyricist for the Grateful Dead, and a libertarian activist on the Internet, was convinced that the fledgling network should remain free of government interference. Incensed by what he would call a “stunningly dumb bit of legislation,” he set up a makeshift office adjacent to the party and, shuttling back and forth between his computer and the ballroom, banged out an eight-hundred-and-fifty-word manifesto. Barlow’s “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” would soon—in a term that gained currency only later—go viral. It is now recognized as a seminal document in the history of the Internet: a preamble to a constitution that the network would never formally have.

“Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind,” the manifesto began. “On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.”

Like so many constitutional provisions these days, Barlow’s “Declaration” has recently come under considerable strain. Critics denounce it as an exemplar of techno-utopianism, enabling the uncontrolled, mob-fuelled Internet we have today. The years have not proved kind to Barlow’s vision of “a civilization of the Mind,” more “humane and fair.” Amid the scandals concerning privacy, misinformation, polarization, threats to teen-age mental health, and even complicity in genocide, the radiant future that Barlow foresaw has given way to what the activist and writer Cory Doctorow calls the “enshittification” of the Internet.

In fact, for all Barlow’s outrage, governments remained mostly hands-off during the Internet’s early history. Clinton may have signed the C.D.A., but his real attitude was summed up by his statement that regulating the Internet was like “trying to nail Jello to the wall.” Large parts of the C.D.A. were later invalidated by the Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds, and buried within the act itself was a clause that has over the years come to emblematize the long leash granted to the Internet: Section 230 of the act protects online platforms from liability for content created by their users.

During the past decade or so, however, governments around the world have grown impatient with the notion of Internet autarky. A trickle of halfhearted interventions has built into what the legal scholar Anu Bradford calls a “cascade of regulation.” In “Digital Empires” (Oxford), her comprehensive and insightful book on global Internet policy, she describes a series of skirmishes—between regulators and companies, and among regulators themselves—whose outcomes will “shape the future ethos of the digital society and define the soul of the digital economy.”

Other recent books echo this sense of the network as being at a critical juncture. Tom Wheeler, a former chairman of the F.C.C., argues in “Techlash: Who Makes the Rules in the Digital Gilded Age?” (Brookings) that we are at “a legacy moment for this generation to determine whether, and how, it will assert the public interest in the new digital environment.” In “The Internet Con” (Verso), Doctorow makes a passionate case for “relief from manipulation, high-handed moderation, surveillance, price-gouging, disgusting or misleading algorithmic suggestions”; he argues that it is time to “dismantle Big Tech’s control over our digital lives and devolve control to the people.” In “Read Write Own” (Random House), Chris Dixon, a venture capitalist, says that a network dominated by a handful of private interests “is neither the internet I want to see nor the world I wish to live in.” He writes, “Think about how much of your life you live online, how much of your identity resides there. . . . Whom do you want in control of that world?”

Questions of Control Have Always Hovered Over the Internet. Its decentralized architecture has long been key to its identity, wielded as a form of originalist rhetoric against any suggestion of external intervention. The roots of this architecture are, in fact, somewhat murky—attributed, variously, to an effort at sharing computing resources more efficiently, a nineteen-sixties confluence of technocracy and hippie anarchism, and the search for a network design that could withstand nuclear attack (a claim disputed by some Internet veterans). In the 1999 memoir “Weaving the Web,” Tim Berners-Lee, often called the father of the World Wide Web, likened the network’s principles to those upheld by his Unitarian Universalist church—individualism, peer-to-peer relationships, “philosophies that allow decentralized systems.”

In truth, the notion of a fully decentralized network has always been something of a myth. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (icann), which has been described as the “secret government of the Internet,” has long managed a directory—the Domain Name System, or D.N.S.—that the Internet needs in order to function. (For Berners-Lee, the D.N.S. was a “centralized Achilles’ heel” that could bring the network down.) Until 2016, icann was under the authority of the U.S. Department of Commerce. In a 2006 book titled “Who Controls the Internet?,” the law professors Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu described “the death of the dream of self-governing cyber-communities,” and argued that governments had an array of means at their disposal with which to enforce their laws in cyberspace, even if imperfectly.

In retrospect, the real problem with the cyberspace-sovereignty argument was simply that it was blinkered. Early Internet activists like Barlow were so focussed on the risks of government intervention that they failed to anticipate the threats posed by private-sector control. This was perhaps unsurprising. Barlow was writing amid the end-of-history glow produced by the collapse of Communism, his techno-utopianism a variation of the era’s market utopianism. The mood has shifted considerably since then. Today’s digital activists came of age in the shadow of 2008; they tend to call for government intervention, in order to rescue the Internet from what the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis calls “technofeudalism,” in a book by that title.

The dramatic rise of generative artificial intelligence has only accelerated calls for government intervention—and, significantly, these calls are often coming from within the industry. Sam Altman, the recently reinstated head of OpenAI, went before Congress last spring and essentially demanded regulation; Elon Musk has called for a federal department of A.I. In “The Coming Wave” (Crown), Mustafa Suleyman, a co-founder of DeepMind and of Inflection, two leading A.I. companies, argues that government intervention is necessary to protect us from the technology’s enormous risks. (“At some stage, in some form, something, somewhere, will fail,” he writes, in what’s generally a judicious account. “And this won’t be a Bhopal or even a Chernobyl; it will unfold on a worldwide scale.”)

Activists have every reason to hope that A.I. anxieties will bolster their efforts at Internet governance. Yet they’re so attuned to the difficulties of the present that their remedies may do little to nurture a broader set of values—freedom, solidarity, equitable access to resources—that the Internet once promised to advance. The perils of the libertarian approach are now clear; we may soon be learning the costs of reflexive statism. More than a thousand A.I. policy initiatives across sixty-nine countries have lately been documented. In the U.S., some thirty states are debating (or have already enacted) digital-privacy bills, adding to federal oversight by agencies such as the F.T.C. and the S.E.C.

“Look, Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this,” hal, the digital brain in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” tells his human minder, in a tone that calls to mind the bland neutrality of today’s chatbots. “I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.” In the movie, Dave is right to fear the worst. Amid the rush to regulate, though, hal’s advice might be worth taking.

In “American Capitalism” (1952), the first volume in a trilogy on economics, John Kenneth Galbraith outlined his notion of “countervailing power.” He was living in a time—much like our own—of rising corporate concentration and faltering competition; at such moments, Galbraith argued, markets could not be relied upon to police themselves. The solution he favored was a form of ecological balance: forces such as trade unions and consumer coalitions would act as a constraint. “Private economic power is held in check by the countervailing power of those who are subject to it,” Galbraith wrote. “The first begets the second.”

The past decade has seen the search for a countervailing power to offset the mighty tug of commercial interests. As Galbraith noted, government is not the only—or even the preferred—option; various other ideas have been mooted. In “Internet for the People” (Verso), Ben Tarnoff calls for a “deprivatized” Internet with new “models of public and cooperative ownership”; in “Own This!” (Verso), R. Trebor Scholz likewise explores the potential of worker-and-user-owned “platform co-ops.” (He discusses, although does not endorse, the idea of nationalizing large companies like Amazon and Facebook.) Dixon, in “Read Write Own,” reverts to a form of technological purism, resting his hopes in the potential of blockchain. The trouble is that, after more than a decade of casting about for checks on Big Tech, the only countervailing power seemingly able to muster the required heft and legitimacy is the nation-state.

But the law is a blunt instrument. Despite an emerging consensus about the need for governance, policymakers, businesspeople, and citizens are left grappling with regulation’s numerous shortcomings. There’s the common, and not entirely unfounded, concern that regulation stifles innovation (“More upstream governance translates to less downstream innovation” as Andrew McAfee put it), and a growing recognition of what is known as law’s distributive effect—the fact that smaller companies are often disproportionately hit by the costs of regulatory compliance. In 2016, when Europe adopted the landmark G.D.P.R. (General Data Protection Regulation), Facebook, now Meta, is said to have hired some thousand people to help it comply. Such actions are well beyond the means of most businesses, especially startups; policies designed to weaken market concentration may actually strengthen it.

The sheer scope—and sprawl—of the regulatory onslaught is surely part of the problem, too. The theory of countervailance relies on a certain equilibrium: various forces operate together—sometimes in conjunction, sometimes in opposition—to maintain balance in the marketplace. But the pendulum of history swings wide; after decades of virtually unchecked corporate power, we may now be entering an equally pernicious period of regulatory free-for-all. The landscape of global digital governance is today characterized by a hodgepodge of overreaching, overlapping, and often contradictory laws, many more performative than substantive.

Consider the slew of European privacy regulations responsible for all those Whac-A-Mole cookie warnings which, it’s increasingly clear, do little to protect user data. Other measures have the flavor of New England’s nineteenth-century Watch and Ward Society. In Utah, legislators have proposed nighttime curfews on the use of social media by minors (the first “state-run internet bedtime,” as Gizmodo put it); in Arkansas, Virginia, and other states, suggested identity-verification requirements on porn sites, again aimed at minors, have raised concerns about the privacy rights of legitimate users. And governments, having promised to protect our information from corporate exploitation, now seem intent on maintaining their own peepholes. France recently passed a bill to let police remotely activate microphones, G.P.S. devices, and cameras on phones; the E.U. is considering mandating message providers (like WhatsApp and Signal) to enable “client-side scanning,” which would allow automated scrutiny of private communications. Surveillance capitalism, it seems, is reverting to good old-fashioned surveillance.

In “Digital Empires,” Bradford tries valiantly to impose some coherence on this distended terrain. She considers the efflorescence of Internet laws as part of a wider struggle for global power in an emerging multipolar world. As she sees it, the disparate strands of lawmaking can be grouped into three regulatory regimes, or competing “digital empires.” Despite some recent shifts, the U.S. continues largely to advocate for the Internet’s original “market-driven model”; China’s “state-driven model” represents a transposition of its general authoritarianism to the online realm; and the E.U.’s “rights-driven model” seeks to chart something of a middle way, more proactive and risk-averse than America’s but also more mindful of privacy and individual rights than China’s. Each approach corresponds, broadly, to a different calibration between the countervailing powers of nation-state and private enterprise.

As an analytical framework, this categorization is compelling, though it has worrisome implications. For years, opponents of regulation have warned about the dangers of a Splinternet—the prospect that state assertions of digital sovereignty could Balkanize the network into incompatible fiefdoms. Their dire predictions have mostly not been borne out; the core architecture of the network, its ability to transport data packets around the world, has remained essentially intact, governed by technocratic consensus in international standards bodies like the Internet Engineering Task Force and the International Telecommunication Union. But, as the Internet becomes increasingly intertwined with the unstable geopolitics of our era, the future appears more perilous.

That became clear one day in Geneva in September, 2019, when, as the Financial Times reported, a group of Chinese engineers entered the headquarters of the I.T.U. and gave a PowerPoint presentation to delegates from some forty countries. The engineers unveiled a futuristic vision of a reinvented Internet—“New I.P.,” or Internet Protocol—which had been conceived by representatives from the Chinese private and public sectors. New I.P. represented a “top-down” network that would enable capabilities such as “holographic communications” and a “tactile Internet.” It would also allow for something called ManyNets, permitting the Internet to be broken up into distinct networks that could be controlled by individual nations. One of the touted benefits of this new protocol was the ability to implement “shut-up commands” that would block users from a network.

The proposal, part of a bigger push for what Xi Jinping has called a more “sovereign” Internet, was supported by Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, among other countries. The E.U., the United States, and various technical bodies (including the I.E.T.F.) stood in opposition. The simmering divisions came to a head in 2022, during the election for the post of secretary-general of the I.T.U., which pitted Rashid Ismailov, a Russian official who had worked at Huawei, against Doreen Bogdan-Martin, a former U.S. Department of Commerce official. Bogdan-Martin won the election, and the threat of New I.P. appears to have receded, at least for now. But, for a moment, the Internet as we know it appeared to hang in the balance. An apparently arcane dispute over technology standards was really part of the clash between two very different visions of the economy, society, and the relationship between citizens and state in the digital era.

The Story of the Internet usually focusses on the United States and Europe, with a few recent cameos from China. Yet India is the key player in another approach that’s currently spreading across the so-called Global South, in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. As the journalist and academic Nalin Mehta writes in his recent book, “India’s Techade” (Westland), India has, in the past decade or so, launched a digital revolution “unlike any that came before”—one that started quietly but has recently gone “viral on a scale that is unprecedented.” India’s digital stack, as the basic technology is known, may ultimately shape the future of the Internet far more significantly than the efforts of Western regulators.

The origins of this technology can be traced to the state’s long-standing desire to create a national I.D. system, in part to reduce “leakage” (less politely, corruption-related losses) in its delivery of welfare. As Shankkar Aiyar reported in “Aadhaar: A Biometric History of India’s 12-Digit Revolution,” such ideas had been kicked around in the bureaucracy for many years. Then, in May, 2009, Rahul Gandhi, the scion of India’s leading political family, and a key figure in the then ruling Congress Party, sent a text to the Indian entrepreneur and billionaire Nandan Nilekani, asking him to fly to New Delhi. Nilekani soon joined the cabinet as head of a new digital-identity program, known as the Unique Identification Authority of India.

At an elementary level, the program was simply an effort to create something akin to a Social Security number—no small achievement in a country as large as India, but hardly revolutionary on its own merits. Under Nilekani’s guidance, the program has overcome public skepticism, bureaucratic inertia, and legal challenges to sign up 1.4 billion citizens. Each now possesses a twelve-digit identity number, known as an Aadhaar (Hindi for “foundation”), which is linked to biometric information such as iris scans and fingerprints. But Nilekani’s real achievement has been to use the I.D. numbers as the underpinnings of an integrated digital ecology (“the stack”). It consists of government-enabled modules (collectively referred to as digital public infrastructure, or D.P.I.) that allow citizens to make online payments, receive welfare, conduct banking, and store and certify official documents (e.g., covid-vaccine certificates). The government, in this way, is building what the World Bank calls “plumbing” for a more controlled—and possibly less toxic—version of the Internet, leaving space for private developers to build platforms and services on top of it.

Ten billion or so payments take place every month in the stack, accounting for almost half of the entire world’s real-time digital payments. The technology has enabled trillions of dollars in commercial activity, and is estimated to have saved around thirty-four billion dollars between 2013 and 2021 by impeding corruption. Beyond numbers, the stack’s impact is increasingly visible in daily life. Mehta’s book is filled with human stories that vividly illustrate technocratic terms like “financial inclusion” and “leapfrog development.” There’s Lakshmi, a fifty-eight-year-old widow, who uses her Aadhaar card and thumbprint to access a monthly pension of eight hundred rupees. There’s the village of Saharanpur, where government money for purchasing new toilets and even homes is directly deposited into residents’ accounts, thus cutting out grasping middlemen. And there are a multitude of small venders—fruit sellers, rural tea shops, thatched roadside restaurants—that now take payments via cell-phone-scanned QR codes, changing the way Indians conduct commerce. Such scenes, familiar to anyone who might have recently visited India, explain why the digital stack has been compared, in its potential consequences, to the Green Revolution of the nineteen-sixties.

As impressive as the stack has been for India, though, its most significant impact may turn out to be global. A growing number of countries, mostly in the Global South, either have started using elements of the stack or are considering doing so. The Philippines has issued digital I.D.s powered by Indian technology to seventy-six million of its hundred and ten million people; a pilot program in Morocco has enrolled seven million citizens. Singapore and the U.A.E. have connected their domestic payment networks to the Indian one. Jamaica used the stack to issue covid-vaccine certificates. For India, the stack represents an opportunity to project soft power and position itself as a global player—alongside China, the E.U., and the U.S. It wasn’t so long ago that the country was being hailed as the land of nonviolence and a birthplace of spirituality; in the twenty-first century, there’s a growing sense that, in the words of Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s C.E.O., the “magic of India Stack . . . is perhaps the greatest contribution that India can make to the world.”

The stack isn’t typically included in discussions of Internet policy (Bradford, for example, doesn’t mention it in her book); the complex interplay of technology, government, and private enterprise fits uneasily within the classic paradigm of regulation. But the stack is, in fact, emerging as another model for how countervailance between the private sector and the state can shape the digital world, perhaps productively. One way to think about the stack is as a publicly run app store, where the government (rather than private companies) sets the rules for developers, and where those developers, in turn, build their services in a manner that, at least in theory, is safer and more compatible with the public good than the Internet we have today. As Nilekani has put it, India’s approach offers a “new model of how citizens relate to the Internet”—a potential reworking of the digital social contract, a reordering of power so that it is more equitably distributed among citizens, the state, and the private sector.

Some of this is aspirational, of course; the stack is still evolving, and much depends on the benevolence (and the competence) of the state. India’s model is not without its critics, who point to the potential for surveillance and intrusive law enforcement, especially amid perceptions of an erosion in the country’s civil liberties. In a 2018 ruling, the Indian Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of using Aadhaar to deliver welfare payments, even while urging the government to “plug the loopholes” in the system. There have been reports of data leaks, and civil-society organizations worry about the ways in which less tech-literate citizens could be left out. These are the perils, in various iterations, and across jurisdictions, of the nation-state’s newfound determination to assert authority in the digital realm. A great rebalancing is under way; a new Internet may slowly be coming into view.

When was the Internet born? It depends on one’s definition of the Internet, but a plausible case could be made for the year 1989, when Tim Berners-Lee, then a fellow at cern, the physics research lab outside Geneva, submitted to his supervisor a document titled “Information Management: A Proposal,” effectively producing the blueprint for the realm of clickable links known as the World Wide Web. The supervisor returned the document with one line of feedback scrawled across the top: “Vague but exciting . . .”

His assessment remains true; the Internet is still full of promise but nebulous in its contours. There’s a reason that the current debate over its control is so fraught. How the Internet is governed—and who does the governing—will determine what the Internet is. The stakes in the ongoing tussle between nation-states and markets are, in other words, not merely managerial; they are also existential.

Will the Internet harden into an oligarchic playground, or will it become the tamer (and perhaps less innovative) place envisioned by European regulators, something akin to a digital public utility? Will large sections of it eventually bend to the power of tyrants and illiberal populists, determined to stamp out what Xi Jinping has castigated as the network’s “hidden negative energy”? Or will the more consequential influence be the model that India is pioneering, a walled garden in which private enterprise is allowed to flourish, but within confines established by the state?

The answer may at least partly lie in how—and where—the Internet is being used. In 1996, when Barlow wrote his manifesto, there were some eighty million Internet users around the world, eighty per cent of whom lived in North America and Europe. Today, there are more than five billion people on the Internet, roughly two-thirds of them from countries in the Global South. India and China now account for about half the world’s mobile-data traffic; the fastest-growing population of users is in Africa. The Internet remains a work in progress. But there’s reason to think that its future is being written in a very different place than its past was. ♦

#Internet #Worries #Privacy #Politics #Psyches #Stakeholders #Activists #Technocrats #The New Yorker #Akash Kapur

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