Categories: Articles

The Internet Is Not Evil

It’s easy to blame technology, Social Media and even Facebook when people do bad things.

Please watch this:

"Guns don’t kill people. People kill people."

I actually don’t believe that. I’d prefer a world without weapons. That being said, the Internet is neither good nor evil. It’s what people do with it that will make it good or evil. When the Internet first began its ascent into our daily lives, the skeptics would often say, "the Internet is nothing but porn and gambling." The truth is that you get out of the Internet what you put into it. You can spend years reading, sharing and contributing to online channels without ever being faced with porn and gambling. It can just as easily be used for good (look at Kiva, Kickstarter, etc…), it’s when the people who do bad things use it to do more bad things that we tend to shine a light on the channel of communication instead of on the root of the problem. Flash mobs, text messaging and Twitter doesn’t create a platform for crime.

It’s the people. Not the technology.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.