In the 1990s, commentators hailed the internet as a utopian gateway. It was supposed to raise living standards indefinitely, drain politics of ideology, and transform the globe into a harmonious community, says associate professor of history Angus Burgin.
None of that happened. At a moment when social media is awash in disinformation, a handful of tech companies wield enormous power, and online spaces fragment society more than they unite it, the optimism of the internet’s early era looks misplaced.
Burgin, who is writing a book about the internet’s intellectual history, argues that these promises began to ring hollow earlier than most people realize, even as the utopian vision was reaching its peak.
Early warnings
In his forthcoming book, which is tentatively titled The Last Optimists: America in the Internet Age, Burgin revisits a 1998 Carnegie Mellon study that he says served as an early warning. Funded by computer companies eager to prove the internet made people happier, the study found the opposite. The New York Times reported the findings under the headline “Sad, Lonely World Discovered in Cyberspace.”
“It didn’t take long for people to realize this utopian vision wasn’t going to come to pass,” says Burgin, whose work, rather than simply condemning or celebrating the internet, invites readers to rethink some widely accepted ideas about the revolutionary technology. “It’s not a story that begins with social media. It predates that significantly.”
Still, the 1990s vision was intoxicating. Policymakers embraced the idea that the internet could reconcile individual freedom with collective solidarity. Anyone would be able to start a business with minimal capital, while digital networks would dissolve barriers.
You start seeing people talk about the global brain. Everybody connected into a kind of single organism.”
Angus Burgin
Hopes and misconceptions
The internet would also produce hyper-informed citizens and reinvigorate democracy. The economist Paul Romer, who later went on to head the World Bank, led politicians to believe it would generate limitless economic growth because online, as Burgin puts it, “there would be no natural constraints in the way there was with industrial capital.” Geography, too, would lose its power.
Yet Burgin traces how these promises contained the seeds of their own undoing.
The internet’s lack of physical constants made it ideal for surveillance by companies hungry for our data. Policymakers, convinced the internet was inherently entrepreneurial, failed to curb corporate consolidation.
Most consequential was the collapse of the idea that technology would guarantee infinite economic growth. That assumption underpinned the liberal centrism of the 1990s—the belief that the internet would power endless dynamism and enable broad redistribution. That idea began to unravel in the early 2000s and was decisively shattered by the 2008 financial crisis, Burgin contends.
New waves
“Politics is deeply affected by perceptions of the future,” Burgin says. “Once that assumption about growth fell away, liberal centrist politics stopped working, and we became more likely to see the rise of political extremes.”
And today, as artificial intelligence inspires a fresh wave of hype, Burgin sees a crucial difference. “Most people have come of age with a deep cynicism about technology,” he says. “Almost no one believes AI will solve inequality. If anything, most commentators worry it will make it worse.”
