The Internet is an amazing thing but I don’t think it’s what we all thought it would be 20 years ago.
Then, the Internet was not known as the Internet, at least, not in popular parlance. It was known as the “Information Superhighway.” Remember that term? It was used by everyone to describe an ideal digital world in which ideas could be exchanged in ways never before possible, one in which everyone could take part and benefit. Nations, governments, business and personal lives would be altered for the better by the free and universal sharing of “information.”
Today I would say the Internet is not much more than a giant bulletin board on which people anonymously post their opinions about trivial matters — complete with grammatical and spelling errors.
So much for the Information Superhighway.
What issue lies at the root of my remarks? How about the free album released last week by the rock band U2 via the digital giant known as Apple.
At the tail end of its massive launch of iPhone 6 and the Apple Watch, CEO Tim Cook unveiled U2 and its new single and album. With the simple touch of a button, the Irish rock band — long my favorite group for almost 30 years — made its latest album available to 500 million iTunes account holders. For free.
Fans of the band had no idea this was coming, so when I excitedly checked my own account, there it was — 11 songs for which I had waited more than five years, all ready for download, at no charge to me. (Not at no charge to Apple — the band was reportedly paid $100 million for the album.) I immediately downloaded the album from iCloud and boom — I was listening to the new U2.
Note that I said that I downloaded the album which was waiting for me in my iCloud.
The album did not magically appear in my account. Nor was it on my iPhone.
It was available to be downloaded. It did not appear on its own.
Fans rejoiced! Hurray for the Internet and for Apple!
Cut to one week later. The Internet — collectively used to describe all humanity now — is up in arms, almost literally, about these 11 songs that have materialized on people's iPhones. Twitter has blown up. Most of the tweets run along these lines: "Who the h--- is U2 and how do I get their cr---y songs off my phone?!"
Try to understand how old this makes me feel, reading tweets from generations of alleged music lovers who do not know who or what U2 is. I could explain that U2 has only been around for 30 years, won more Grammys than almost any other recording act and, as recently as three years ago, launched the most successful worldwide concert tour in history, but I’m afraid all that information would go over the heads of most people. (Remember, we are no longer the Information Superhighway.) So I'll remain silent, except to say that all these outraged iPhone users might as well be asking themselves, “Who the h--- are The Beatles?”
What I find so amusing is that so many people apparently have no idea how their own phones/iTunes accounts work.
I have never had a problem deleting unwanted digital files from any device I have ever owned. It is literally as easy as highlighting the file, hitting delete, or dragging said file into the trash. Boom. I do it every day.
I'll admit that both Apple and U2 have created for themselves a rather large PR problem. No band, no matter how successful, should set itself up as the one to create the first spam album. Apple has even had to go so far as to invent an “album removal tool” for iTunes users who, again, don't know how to delete digital files.
Hopefully, the free-album brouhaha will blow over in the next few weeks. Undoubtedly it will, as soon as the next trivial matter comes along to shake up the Internet. Too bad about that whole Information Superhighway thing, though, huh?
Contact managing editor Dan Marsh at [email protected].