Traversing the Deep

Day 27

Learned a Bunch

Task 27: Figure out what the heck the “deep web” actually is.

Ah, the internet. That endlessly bountiful fount of information and knowledge; all of which is pure and true and never, ever Photoshopped…

I’ve been using the internet now for longer than I care to admit, and I was late to the party. I didn’t even connect to AOL (remember them?) until I was an Arizona ex-pat living on the beach in LALA land. Up until then I knew the internet existed, but I thought it was just for studious research types and bad guys in action movies. Little did I know. Remember that video of the alien singing “I Will Survive?” Yeah, I thought that was cool at the time too.

Fast forward to 2016 and this internet thing is getting a little crazy — and making us all a little dumber. Seriously, how many phone numbers do you still know by heart? When was the last time you saw a Yellow Pages (a printed one). What is the capital of Lithuania? Where is Lithuania? Yes, I just had to Google that, which proves my underlying point — how did we know anything before Google? I remember as a kid I knew hundreds of phone numbers and addresses by heart; I remembered everyone’s birthday without a calendar; I don’t think I ever knew the capital of Lithuania but I could spell discombobulated without relying on autocorrect. I suppose it’s not just the internet, it’s the ever-increasing rapidity of technological advancement that’s making many of us dumber. The insane pace of which is largely possible thanks to the internet.

As I get older I become aware, with annoying certainty, of all the times I should’ve listened to my parents. I distinctly remember a time my father told me I “should really study this computer thing.” Naturally, I dismissed him. In my stubbornly adolescent brain I thought there was nothing more for me to learn than word processing. I didn’t see a need to really learn how computers worked, how to repair them, how to program them… I don’t recall what phase of what-I-wanted-to-be-when-I-grew-up I was in; evidently it didn’t require a knowledge of computer programming. In my defense, this was still the days of pagers, cell phones that doubled as bricks, and dot-matrix printers. Which to my father, who was born in 1929, were all revolutionary; he saw where this crap was headed.

I digress. As I’ve become more embroiled with tech culture, I’ve decided it’s high time I learn a few things beyond word processing and Excel spreadsheet formulation (of which my knowledge is very basic). It occurred to me that it might be worth my time to know how the world wide web functioned without Google, so I started looking into the “deep” and “dark” web and the ways people of varying degrees of moral fortitude accessed these places. I’m sure I’m on about 100 Homeland Security watch lists at this point. I hope I can still get on an airplane.

What I’ve discovered, and what many of you probably already know, is that the deep web is really not all that scary. It appears that it’s pretty common for people to conflate the deep web and dark web, but there are very important differences. In a nutshell, most of us probably use the deep web more often than we realize. Specific government pages, for example, won’t come up in a Google search. If you want to know the specifications for a specific liquor license number in California, you have to first access the website for the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (abc.ca.gov, in case you’re wondering) and from that site you can search for the license number you’re inquiring about. That shift from Google to the ABC site landed you on the “deep” web. The dark web is actually encrypted and requires special browsers and is a conduit for much more nefarious activity. It’s also a place for above-board activity for those who are extremely particular about their privacy. Obviously, these definitions are oversimplifications; if you want more info, BrightPlanet has a whitepaper you can download that goes into greater detail outlining why both can be useful.

There’s also a good article on Gizmodo about how to safely navigate those nether regions of the world wide web, with links to the necessary browser apps and tips for avoiding stuff you just don’t wanna mess with. While you’re on Gizmodo, check out the recommended reading about Facebook privacy and how incognito mode doesn’t actually hide much. It’s stuff worth knowing (and I’ve warned you that Gizmodo is the ultimate procrastination tool). This little research project has actually turned into a future task: seeing if I can manage to traverse the deep web all on my lonesome.

But it’s a task for another day. Today I’m busy Snapchatting. Now there’s a way to make yourself feel old…

Happy Saturday!