The internet became near-universal and normatively sacred within two decades of the web’s invention.

Evidence

By 2014, about twenty years after the invention of the world wide web, an extensive survey by Pew Research found 87 percent of Americans using the internet. Among those, 76 percent regarded it as “a good thing for society” and 90 percent as “a good thing for me.” Indeed, people routinely call 911 when Facebook is down. In less than two decades after the Mosaic browser was released to the public, enabling easy access to the world wide web, a 2010 BBC poll found that 79 percent of people in twenty-six countries considered internet access to be a fundamental human right. Six years later, the United Nations adopted specific language on internet access: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1702

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s earlier argument about the utopian promises that layered assent onto surveillance capitalism’s rise. — connects to: The millennium marked a visible migration of mass attention from television to the internet — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 857
• SHARE: The stat that people call 911 when Facebook goes down is a vivid, narrow data point for someone tracking platform dependency.

Broader Connections

• The millennium marked a visible migration of mass attention from television to the internet #corroborates (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 857