Title: Is technology bad for us? | Internet | The Guardian
Headings: Is technology bad for us?
The Eva Wiseman column Internet
Is technology bad for us?
Eva Wiseman

Content: That in "unreal life" it's not a person you're shouting at on Twitter, it's a hologram. A shadow. It's the same naivety that leads to the thinking that in our "unreal life" everything is free and nothing really matters. Piece by piece, we've learned that the sites that are the floors and walls of the internet have access to all our information. But the sinister thing about this, is not necessarily that they own our secrets, but that we weren't aware we'd given them away. In no other transaction is there ever this murkiness, a contract hidden in small print. Much of the internet – the bits that make money – is designed to be addictive, to yank the most time and cash from us, and as so much of it is hidden, it gets away with things we wouldn't tolerate elsewhere. So instead of switching off the internet, the conversation should be about how to change it. How to clarify what we're giving for what we take. And the responsibility should not be with young people, in their WiFi-reliant worlds – it should be with the massive corporations that profit from them.