Freemors Blog

Musings of an East Coast Techie
Archive for August 2019

The Sheeplenet

2019-08-21 by Freemor

Today I am coining (as far as I am currently aware) a new term. "The Sheeplenet".

Sheeplenet: A term referring to Google, FaceBook, Amazon, Microsoft, Twitter    
            Instagram (still facebook), Snapchat, Youtube (still Google), Etc. 
            That most people are referring to when they use the term Internet.

To be clear, the Sheeplenet is not, nor has it ever been "The Internet". The Internet is the collection of interconnected autonomous networks that people use via their ISP to talk to those things.

I am coining the term mostly for personal use but mainly to disambiguate all those services from "The Internet". I'm all over the Internet. I use it every day. I'm just not on the Sheeplenet.

People are often confused when I tell them, "I'm not on service A", "No I'm not on service B or C eiither.". This confusion leads to questions like, "Aren't you on the Internet?". Which is of course technically very, very, incorrect. That is akin to asking someone, "Don't you drive?" just because they never go to your favourite mall or coffee shop.

I use the "Sheeple" part, Not disparagingly but rather to refer to the unconsidered way that the vast majority of people end up, not only on these services, but also thinking that they are the "Internet".

Because of this incorrect mindset (And it is a mindset that the companies in question work hard to foster in the people that spend time there) people stop wondering what other wonderful things the Internet can do. What else is out there? What strange and wonderful corners are there? How else can the fact that I, You, almost anyone, can talk to every other computer on the planet be put to amazing uses?

It is the loss of the understanding that a service that you can access via the Internet is not "The Internet". It is a misconception that hides the wonder, potential, and freedom of the Internet from those using said services. I can talk to almost anyone on the planet with the Internet without the need for any of the Sheeplenet. Doing so is trivially easy. It's not because I'm an uber techie, or have some special ability that others lack. The only special ability I have is seeing the open roads of the Internet as exactly that. Roads that take me where I want to go. Without having to use any service that is gonna steal my data, my privacy, and my individuality in the process.

So if you're looking for Freemor.. I'm, "out there, traveling the open highways of the Internet...." And I am definitely not alone out there. There are many other people traveling those roads instead of sitting in a Mall and thinking it is the totality of this thing called the Internet.

Come on out and join us. Feel the freedom of the digital highway as you explore the wonder that truely is "The Internet".