My two cents; the «system». And as per system I mean the socioeconomic system that chopped the social links and transformed all of us into a dumb consumers.
Wow.
Hobbes, I'm impressed. That is what I needed. This almost sounds like a useable root cause.
be aware, nothing good will come if we consider ourselves as consumers not as citizens. Don’t know in USA, but in Europe we (the people) have been part of the problem (we were delighted with our affluence, no time to take care of our rights).
You put something into words, that I observed, and felt, but could not really express. Last decade I often travelled eastwards, for leasure. And there I found this change just happening. I found it in Poland, where old-style bus stations were replaced by ten-storey glass&metal shopping-malls. I went to the Baltics, and there it was not yet gone so far, and I talked to people (fellow pagans) there and told them that I like the old style better. They pointed me to Belarus: go there, you will like it, you will find still more of the old ways there.
So this apparently is still happening.
Is today's internet part of the problem? sure, but because it's a booster that had made the transition from citizens to dumb consumers, and from a society to a herd of isolated and extremist individuals faster and easier (by far more effective than the TV). Google is not the problem, it's an agent.
Nicely put. So, near 2000, when we "hackers" were still fascinated by the
technical possibilites, somebody else must already have figured how to not only use this infrastructure as a marketing instrument, but also to shape society.
Looking at these "agents", it seems they are just a couple of individuals who were lucky to do the right thing at the right moment, and then got incredibly rich. Looking closer, practically all of them came from american private universities.
In my country, before 80's, there were a lot of citizens/neighbors associations
Maybe You should explain this a little more. I have no idea what "neighbours associations" might be - this seems to be something country-specific.
So, the problem IMHO is that, now, we are not a society, we are a bunch of consumers and for the «system» we are as valuable as the money we have.
NPCs. And it's no surprize that occasionally one might have enough of being an NPC.
Back in the old century, somebody told me: look at a news paper and their
customers - these are NOT the readers, these are the people who buy advertisement space.
Now in the new century, somebody told me: look at facebook and their users. They are not customers of facebook, they are the
product.
Ring a bell, anybody? There was a movie, "the Island", where people are kept as
products. (It's actually a script for what to do when one might like to do anything like such to a society. As I said further up: science-fiction is prophecy)
