After the recently publicised death of net neutrality in the United States the general populace finds themselves once again asking the question, what happens now? Over the course of 2017 the global community has encountered a tidal wave of scenarios that would have seemed absurd only a year before, from alternative facts becoming a buzz word eagerly dancing off the tip of your tongue to news channels devoting large portions of their time to deconstructing obscure early morning tweets.
 

As the fee-to-play business model has become a prevalent element in video game development, with corporate giants continually charging extortionate amounts for in-game unlockable content it was only a matter of time before other sectors of corporate society were influenced by this particularly ugly form of late capitalism. Soon the information superhighway will have added restrictions in every country. Artificial and unneeded slow lanes will become the norm, throttling traffic and restricting your apparent human right to a high speed internet connection.

Once villainised in the news for their connections to the illegal drug trade, cryptocurrencies currently make up more than 1% of the global money supply. Bitcoin continues to fluctuate and grow, moving further away from its cyberpunk roots and becoming a valued asset in many millennials virtual wallets.

In a world full of uncertainty and hidden agendas disguised by post-truth linguistics, where imagined dystopian futures are becoming present day scenarios how will the digital landscape transform and evolve in a society that forgives and forgets past discrepancies on a daily basis, restricts internet access and relies on a continually evolving algorithm to monitor and monetise created content. Information is power, and in a world where an ocean of conflicting ideologies is just a few clicks away, I find myself wondering why we haven’t been restricted already?