I'm reminded of Clay Shirky's talk/essay (wish I could find a link, but it doesn't seem to be on his website any more) about the tremendous consumption of gin (and other drugs) during the Industrial Revolution as a way to deal with the changing world and cognitive surplus of extra time. My hope is that we're in a transitional period when it comes to the internet; we'll become more and more aware of how to use the internet responsibly and regulate ourselves individually or communally to use it for its greatest benefit. But we're in the midst of the Great Binge right now, playing with technologies that have massive psychological effects without considering their long term impacts, giving people what they want in the short term while really reshaping culture, society, and what it means to be a person in the long term.

In my more pessimistic/imaginative moments, I feel like after the coming apocalypse the internet will be banned, Butlerian Jihad-style; long-range communication technologies only for the elite in strictly regulated contexts, because too much access for the individual causes addiction and madness. To be clear, I don't think this is a good outcome (as with the Industrial Revolution, technology has huge long-term benefits if the terrible costs can be overcome) but I think there needs to be a really serious change in how we think about communication technology, and part of that means acknowledging its harms.