In January 2022, it was reported that 62.5% of the world’s population has access to the internet with the number of users reaching 4.95 billion people (Kemp, 2022).
It’s a no-brainer that if you want to communicate with potential customers, audience or stakeholders the internet is where to do it. While you may produce content to communicate with these various groups of internet users you have to differentiate enough to stand out and not be swallowed up in the vast abyss of an endless supply of info.
I know I have gone on YouTube to watch a video and an hour later I’m forcing myself to disconnect. How many ads did I see in these 3 to 5 minute videos? How many suggested videos kept me engaged or intrigued.
Did these ads persuade me to purchase something? Sometimes I may check out a product and sometimes I do purchase a product. The ability to reach billions each day is an advertisers dream and the ability to capture data from every user is the business of every social media company.
Let’s think back to 2020 and the start of COVID. Business shut down. Schools shut down. People are home. How do they connect. How does business and schools continue to operate. Telework and online school goes into overdrive. Social Media usage explodes. Social media platforms are now charging advertisers a premium and it’s increasing their bottom line.. On Facebook, analysis indicates that combined spend on these platforms grew by 43% year-on-year during Q3 2021, matching the peak seen in 2020’s golden quarter (Econsultancy, 2021).
Global ad spend will expand another 5.7 percent in 2023 and 7.4 percent in 2024 to hit $873 billion “as brands continue using advertising to spur further growth in e-commerce,” the company predicted (Szalai, 2021).
So why do I highlight social media advertising? When companies are engaging with their audience the company website is the landing page for the basic information but it’s the content that is produced that makes you want to learn more. But when is content too much? When are we so overwhelmed by the internet we just turn it off?
For those who don’t know, an exabyte is 1,000 bytes to the sixth power. The estimated amount of data on the internet created daily will be 463 exabytes in 2025 (Vuleta, 2021).
As people continue to engage on the internet the underlying constant is money. The old saying time is money is as true as ever.
We are tracked, targeted and exploited via the internet and for many of us that is just how our daily lives are.
Where is all of this information stored. In 2013, a story on the NSA highlighted the Utah data center that is classified yet reported on. According to the NSA, the data collected and stored here includes text messages, phone calls, website visits, Internet searches, emails, credit card information, travel information, legal documents, financial information, and health records (Armstrong, 2023).
If privacy isn’t your cup of tea and you are more an environmentalist or climate change activist the $1.5 billion facility is quite an undertaking with a reported 65 megawatt substation powering the complex. That is enough to power 65,000 homes. Also, the cooling of these computers takes 1.7 million gallons of water per day. You can learn more on this site that is run by the NSA https://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/.
This is just one site ran by the NSA. Facebook, Instagram, Google, TikTok and every other social media and search engine platform has so much information on you that you can’t possibly remember everything they have.
This is where the dangers of this interconnected world come together. We tout all of the positives of the internet. Beauty tutorials, exposure of government corruption, online education, and ordering food at the tip of our fingertips. People don’t have to leave the house much anymore. Nearly everything you want you can access from a phone with an internet connection but what does the future hold. Neuralink. Cyborgs. AI and ML that will make humans extinct.
For those of us 40 and older its funny watching movies from our childhood. Terminator. Escape from New York. The Warriors. RoboCop. They Live. Blade Runner. All of these movies showcased a future that we have not see yet but who knows how accurate they may be in the next 20, 30 or 40 years.
Think of Terminator’s SkyNet. In Terminator, it is stated that Skynet was created by Cyberdyne Systems for SAC-NORAD. When Skynet gained self-awareness, humans tried to deactivate it, prompting it to retaliate with a countervalue nuclear attack, an event which humankind in (or from) the future refers to as Judgment Day. John Connor forms a human resistance against Skynet's machines in the future, which include Terminators, and ultimately leads the resistance to victory. Throughout the film series, Skynet sends various Terminator models back in time to attempt to kill Connor and ensure Skynet's victory (Wikipedia, 2023).
People are already comparing Starlink to the fictional system. Starlink is the sole provider of internet for Ukraine during their war with Russia. Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov stressed the importance of Starlink.
“It was the beginning of a great story, because Starlink technologies changed this war,” Fedorov told an audience at the Web Summit in Lisbon in early November. The satellite internet service has not only kept Ukrainian citizens and businesses online but has also been critical to the war effort, helping troops to communicate with each other on the battlefield and even enabling drones and weapons systems to stay operational (Iyengar, 2022).
Starlink is the sole provider for one countries internet needs while providing internet to customers around the world. How will Starlink and Neuralink change the world as we know it. It still unknown but the Skynet from Terminator seems more plausible each day.
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