“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”- Frederick Douglass

This quote perfectly represents the Internet as it stands. The world cannot create something so great without a long-term repercussion. Every action has a reaction. As it did with slavery, the world adopted the Internet as something to make us more productive, but it has also has started to or will eventually result in diminishing the intelligence of the human race in general. In a world where most solutions are a Google search away, there is no curiosity to drive us forward. Current technology has trapped us. We have become slaves to the Internet. Every day there are more “dings”, “beeps”, “You Have Mail”s, and other technology filling up our lives.

The world used to be supported by slavery. The Great Wall, the Mayan and Aztec Pyramids, and the Egyptian Pyramids were all built with slavery. Then, after the debasing vestige of slavery was abolished in most of the world, the world moved away from slavery to the Industrial Revolution. Before the Industrial Revolution, people tried to create the best products they could, striving to make works of art and they were proud of what they did. But afterwards, their art started to be made on an assembly line and people didn’t make beautiful works of art, they made a generic product, putting one screw or one piece on every product on the line. People lost their freedom of expression. But now, the world is focused on technology, specifically the great yet un-palpable Internet. Chances are that most people above the age of 15 in the United States and other first world countries have a phone in their pocket, a computer or laptop in their house, a T.V. or X-box in their living room or something else to keep them connected and “online”.

So what has the Internet really done to “enslave” us? Why is it bad? E-mail has conserved more paper than any environmentalist has ever done, and has made knowledge easily accessible, and has created new ideas such as Google Earth. The Internet has pushed us forward, helping us accomplish different achievements such as the Egyptian Revolution through a Facebook page and being able to talk with someone on the other side of the world, face to face, with only a slight delay, however, our mentality of the world has changed. We do things for the sake of having them done, instead of trying to make them great and one of a kind. We do less work to accomplish what we want, making everything of less importance. People quail when faced with the thought of doing something giant in longer than a few minutes. The Internet has made obdurate problems something people think they can simply brush off their shoulders and keep moving, rather than helping us believe in ourselves to power through.

Can you even relate literal slavery to the “slavery” of the Internet? Slavery is “a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work”, usually not getting paid. While this is the actual definition of slavery, when most people think of slavery they think of four main things: forced work, little or no pay/against will, depraved punishment, and finally the biggest one, the sacrifice of freedom. While not as pernicious, the Internet is in many ways, a sacrifice of freedom. We use software like e-mail, Facebook, and YouTube to keep us connected to the world, but because we dragged ourselves so far into the Internet, it’s hard to emancipate ourselves. We use up so much of our time on the Internet because we are so involved with it that we have to check social media to see what our friends are doing, check for myriad news about celebrities, and preview the new “best insurrection movie of the year”. And because of our deep involvement, we need to stay connected or we fall behind the rest of the world. Because we can’t keep up with everything going on, the Internet is a double-edged sword.

The Internet is not as inhumane as slavery, obviously, but it takes away something beautiful about the world and us as humans. We know so much to satisfy and kill our curiosity, but there is so much more to the world than the latest song or movie. We keep ourselves so involved in the world of the Internet that we can’t break out of its importance, yet we are distracted from making the world a smaller, friendlier place. Instead the Internet gives us a big environment filled with unimportance. Maybe too much freedom manifests as a form of slavery too.