BANNER HERE

ESCAPE THE BIG TECH DIGITAL PRISON

Step 2 – Introduction: Driving Instructor

Meet Your Driving Instructor

G’day! I’m The Virtual Webmaster, I have 45 years of experience in IT and emerging technologies.

My career spans 20 years in corporate IT and 25 years as a consultant and entrepreneur, specialising in Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, and Webmaster Services. Throughout my IT journey, cybersecurity has always been a critical part of everything I have done.

The internet was once touted as the great Information Superhighway, a free and open network that promised to bring the world closer together. It was meant to be a shared resource for everyone, fostering the free flow of information, the exchange of ideas, and collaborative solutions to global challenges.

No single entity was ever meant to control the Information Superhighway or restrict access to it. How do I know this? Because I was there in the early days.

I watched the internet evolve

I was online years before the Internet was available to the public!

*I was dialling up and connecting to Online message boards years before the internet was available*

I had a computer at home years before IBM created the first Personal Computer!

*I got my first Microcomputer in 1979 –* *two years before IBM launched the PC*

I was around IT before the term “Big Tech” existed!

Google did not exist
Amazon did not exist
Facebook/Meta did not exist
Microsoft existed (1975)
Apple existed (1976)
but both were still relatively small

*I started working on Mainframe computers in the early 80s*

When it come to IT, I’m Ancient

The only gadget I had was an old mono record player used to play music. — My only gadget was an old mono record player used to play music.

I grew up in a world without computers

…we only had TV

As a child, I remember watching science fiction movies and cartoons on TV, like The Jetsons, which portrayed a futuristic, high tech world with flying cars, robots with artificial intelligence, video calls, smart homes, and even instant food machines.

It inspired me to dream of an exciting future where technology would one day solve many of the world’s problems and improve our lives.

Big Tech Take Over

But my childhood dream is fast turning into a nightmare.

Big Tech is transforming this Information Superhighway into a digital toll road, where every click comes at a cost. They’ve created road rules designed not to protect us but to control us, appointing themselves as the highway patrol to police your digital activities. They’re blocking exits, installing surveillance systems to track where you go and everything you do. The Information Superhighway is now taking us directly to a Digital Prison.

We are Digital Slaves on the Big Tech Plantation

Over the past decade, I become increasingly alarmed at the takeover of IT, and the Internet, by Big Tech. I have watched as Big Tech has crept into almost every aspect of our digital lives.

Instead of solving problems and improving our lives, Big Tech has made the internet a divisive place, full of echo chambers created by addictive algorithms designed to maximise engagement. Increasingly, there is one official narrative, and any other view is labeled misinformation, AKA wrong-think.

NEXT: Digital Privacy Made Easy