While reading the two passages there were some parts that stuck out to me in terms of how it connected to The Machine Stops by E.M Forster. After reading these passages I felt like my knowledge of what the Internet is has increased and has made me view it as something more dangerous than I would have otherwise thought.
In Short History of the Internet the author writes about how the internet is formed of many nodes that connect to each other, with the purpose of having a less linear communication system in the sense that if one node goes offline, it doesn’t mess up the whole system. While of course, this has helped make the Internet more reliable as it is hard to shut down completely, I feel like this fact is a cause of at least some concern. From what I understand about the way the nodes work if there ever is the need to completely eradicate the Internet for whatever reason then it would be almost impossible without a heavily coordinated effort. I think that is somewhat concerning because there are so many ways that the Internet could affect our lives, and it is getting harder and harder to get away from it. I would kind of compare it to how the Machine permeates everybody’s life and it’s almost impossible to get away from it. The people couldn’t stop it because they either didn’t care or because the Machine was so big that it was almost impossible to stop anyways. As a result, the Machine became ingrained in everybody’s life and when it started malfunctioning nobody would be able to survive if they tried to adapt to the new world.
When I was reading Long Live the Web I found the idea of a less free Internet to be disturbing. There is already evidence of this with China where many sites get censored to stifle anti-Chinese media and while there is a problem of “fake news” in the U.S I think I would rather have more access to lots of information even if there is a chance for it to be false. I would liken the censorship of the Internet to the censorship of the outside world in The Machine Stops. Because the outside world is barred to the people they never get to know about it and are content with their version of the world because they never experienced anything else. On a somewhat unrelated note, I feel like this is a good argument for traveling in terms of experiencing new cultures and that people who are willing to learn more about the world will tend to be less close-minded.