In many ways, the internet is like the American Wild West—a world of amazing possibilities and the alluring promise of overnight wealth and success. On the other hand, the West was notorious for its Lynch Mobs and rough justice. It was a dangerously unpredictable and unstable world in which, typically, only the most ruthless survived and Innocent Lives were, only too often, brutally trampled upon and destroyed.

The intoxicating Freedom of information exchange and communication afforded by the internet has only brought Mob Rule and demagoguery to the 21^st Century—the very problems that all democratic societies have tried to combat since time immemorial through the creation of democratic institutions that seek to ensure freedom and justice to the citizens of a democratic republic, while curtailing mass hysteria and overreaction and the tendency towards demagoguery and despotism.

In the internet age, however, the reality is, all-too-often, pretty harsh, and the seamy, ugly side of life—the side that would otherwise be buried and hidden away—is given a means of access to the mainstream and emerges to the surface. It is a world of Networked mob rule, which implies networked lynch mobs, networked witch hunts and networked secret societies and organizations with hidden socio-political agendas. In that sense, it is a reflection of the dangerous real world—but what makes it so terrifying is that the ease and immediacy of online communications invite us to confront the grim realities of life on a daily basis even in the intimate, secure surroundings of our homes. The same ease of access and communication that offers everyone the egalitarian promise of a voice in a networked world and age, also provides the means for the truly dangerous and evil elements of our society to gain access to the mainstream and to create a dangerous, unstable environment for all. It is an environment in which the distortion and misrepresentation of information is only too often the norm and in which minor errors and misstatements can often provoke a disastrous cascading effect that ruins innocent lives. To say nothing of the prevalence of gambling and porn sites online.

The cliché is that the internet is "self-regulating"—but the internet is a reflection of the real world, and "self-regulation" in the real world essentially means mob rule. The question is, what is the tradeoff between the freedom of ease-of-access made possible by networked technologies and the dangerous, unstable environment that it often brings about? I guess the only answer is that the internet needs to create its own institutions to ensure safety and validity of information while still enabling freedom and ease of access.

Horizon Cybermedia was started with the aspiration of becoming one such media institution on the internet frontier. We are about creating quality digital media content that does not pander to the lowest common denominator of taste and standards but, instead, aspires to quality and the highest of standards.

Check us out online at http://www.explorationtheseries.com for our ongoing film series, Exploration with Uday Gunjikar. The next episode takes the viewer to the city of Calcutta, India and to a tour of the amazing Christian monuments of the city.

Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.