By ELSIE EYAKUZE

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If you have the world on a string, it’s pretty certain that the world has you on a string back. I am talking about the Internet of course, having lavished praise on it last week for the way in which it has become the hive-mind and most brilliant collection of knowledge we have known in mankind.

Early adoption of technologies can come with some advantages. If you know what Netscape or Geocities are, then you know what I mean. Before the Internet was taken over by corporate greed and general ugh, it took some work to get content on there and you had to contend with a lot of generally friendly banter. Then Facebook happened. It is too easy and kind of boring to make jokes about Mark Zuckerberg at this point in time so let me just say I was struck by an article showing how he wanted to provide “free Internet” to India I believe — so long as it was locked into his platform. Nice play, getting the largest ‘freeish’ population in the world to give you their personal data because you are offering a “free” service. For the record, they did not fall for the ruse.

Then it started happening. In Tanzania, Facebook often comes with “free” minutes with any data bundle you buy. Hmm, I thought. Of course. Then a sequence of alarming events kicked off: We are being registered right up to where the sun doesn’t shine.

Privacy is disappearing. Anyone who is not alarmed by this frightens me. You see, it is already fairly easy I am sure to garner information about individuals and their lives through their phones.

Meanwhile in China — which is REALLY good at dystopia — they have a social credit system to control people that works on surveillance and facial recognition. You can’t tell me that registering Sim cards and partitioning citizens was not a precursor to this nightmarish experiment they are running.

Worse yet: Elections. I was appropriately teased about being an activist and not casting my ballot or even trying in the local elections. For the record, calling every person with strong opinions an “activist” is bad form. Thanks to social media among other observable phenomena, it became apparent that this was not an election per se.

All of this Internet surveillance and registration et cetera suggests a lead up to electronic voting in the coming general elections.

Nobody thinks electronic voting is a good idea, not since Russian hackers stopped even trying to hide themselves. If we are being this bad at local elections on paper, how much worse might a cynic anticipate going forward?

I love technology and the Internet very much. But like I said, when you have the world on a string maybe the world has you on a string too? Not everyone takes kindly to leashes. It bears thinking about, especially here in our glorious Third World countries.

Elsie Eyakuze is a consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report. E-mail: [email protected]