Confession

When the internet became publicly accessible, meaning in the mid-90s, there was the phenomenon of people putting their deepest secrets online. The anonymity, simplicity, and speed were alluring. The confession was quickly made, anonymity largely preserved, and perhaps there was even that little thrill that someone you know might be reading the secrets without knowing who was behind it. These tele-confessions were cathartic. Today, that has reversed: everyone is supposed to see what you do, without realizing what you truly think. Anonymity has also changed.

Writing something without using your own name is similar. Of course, anyone could find out the identity of the domain owner, but that's not the point. Public writing is exciting. Putting your own ego in the background and letting your thoughts organize themselves. It is perhaps even a kind of meditation, which is also very much about overcoming one's own ego consciousness to a certain extent and immersing oneself in a larger collective. This fascination also radiated from the Internet in the beginning. In the 60s, it was the cybernetic systems that stimulated these thoughts.

Many sci-fi books and films are based on this technical level of networking: Dune, Matrix, Neuromancer... There is, of course, a whole literary history of net literature. In Silicon Valley, this has developed into a 'technology spirituality' of radical rationality in the spirit of Ayn Rand in the form of a technical Tower of Babel. It has turned into a dystopia in which the individual becomes a slave to technology. Giorgio Agamben wrote about Homo Sacer. Our 'soul' becomes an economic object.