“Tron is so idealistic: ‘If we just get the tools into the hands of people, then democracy is assured for all time,’” he says. “The irony is that the computer has been used to just damn-near overthrow democracy! If someone had said: ‘If we put these tools into the hands of the public, it’s going to result in endless conspiracy theories, misinformation, lack of civility, endless rivers of porn, and the most violent video games you could ever imagine,’ we would have said: ‘Oh, no way. It’s going to be wonderful!’ It turns out we can predict the tools of the future but we can’t really predict the philosophies or the ethics of the future.”
Newspapers, television, even orators in the public foro have long allowed the wealthy to manipulate democracy.
Democracy has never been a perfect tool because people are gullible and fallible. But it's more convenient for politicians to decry the sins of their enemies than to admit their powers should be largely reduced or stripped away entirely.
Criticising a tool because it allow your enemies to speak is peak society polarisation; not long left before our empire will come down crumbling
It is true, however, that the internet has normalized pornography.
Most other effects are just Guthenberg-like ("people reading and writing their own bibles?!? Madness! And the result is all these new wars!"), par for the course.
I could cry.