Being
born in 1984, my childhood seemed to develop right alongside the rise of the
personal computer, along with the ever-elusive World Wide Web. I was in fourth
grade when, unbeknownst to my parents, I first signed on to AOL 1.0 and began chatting with sleazy perverts inquiring about my bra
size. I thought it was spectacular. Almost 15 years later, they may have
developed parental controls to try and prevent nine year olds from being asked
their bra size, but the internet is far from being controlled…
Nerve sat down for a
compelling Q&A with Clay
Shirky, whose new book Here
Comes Everybody explores the twisted dichotomy of good and evil that
cyberspace continues to inflict on our society, and what that may mean for the
future of media, social change and politics….
I realized that everything I've been talking about
all these years — how much easier it is for groups to get things done — all of
that is the same thing that's allowing the Pro-Ana girls to thrive. Because
now, society doesn't get to say which groups get to form or not, and who gets
to talk to each other, because it's easy and free. That's a big, big social
change, and one that, it seems to me, we're manifestly unready to take on.
Read the entire interview here.
— Alexandra Godfrey
