Thats a fun article, but I think he's made a fundamental mistake in his analysis. The internet is just a very good mirror of society, its society that is 'shit'.
He talks about the sense of wonder when the internet was new (thus tipping his hand as a cynical old net veteran) but goes on that people have done crap things with it, like adverts for candy bars and vast amounts of inaccurate or false information.
I think what the internet has done is allowed everyone the freedom of publication that was traditionaly restricted to a few. If you were to line up 100 random people from the street and question them on their knowledge of a variety of subjects, I think you'd find an amazing number of mistakes, assumptions and outright garbage. They would probably also know more about (and be more interested in) thier favorite candy bar, then they would more worthy intellectual topics. All the internet does is make the average persons level of knowledge and interest widely published.
This might seem a picky point to make, but if I'm right then his quest to have the internet remade in a better form is utterly doomed. If it reflects people, the only way to fix it is to fix the people. Unless we want to restrict access to it in the way access to print media has always been restricted, which would destroy the fundamental point (IMHO).
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
I dont' know whether the author agrees with me, or thinks (mistakenly, IMHO) they are being cleverly ironical by making it a website. Maybe both.
no subject
He talks about the sense of wonder when the internet was new (thus tipping his hand as a cynical old net veteran) but goes on that people have done crap things with it, like adverts for candy bars and vast amounts of inaccurate or false information.
I think what the internet has done is allowed everyone the freedom of publication that was traditionaly restricted to a few. If you were to line up 100 random people from the street and question them on their knowledge of a variety of subjects, I think you'd find an amazing number of mistakes, assumptions and outright garbage. They would probably also know more about (and be more interested in) thier favorite candy bar, then they would more worthy intellectual topics. All the internet does is make the average persons level of knowledge and interest widely published.
This might seem a picky point to make, but if I'm right then his quest to have the internet remade in a better form is utterly doomed. If it reflects people, the only way to fix it is to fix the people. Unless we want to restrict access to it in the way access to print media has always been restricted, which would destroy the fundamental point (IMHO).
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)