a series of increasing infrequent events
Ah yes, you. Still out there, are you? No, not you. Not the people I know/love/hate/am indifferent to that I’ve met in the flesh. I know you’re there. It’s those other people I don’t know that I’m interested in.
See, that was the point of the Internet, The Web, The VAX terminal on the second floor of the library. You’d log on, and all of a sudden the list of humans you could potentially interact with made a couple of exponential leaps.
Heady days, those.
Weblogs, in 2007, are for keeping in touch with the people you already know. The “meetups” that go on are usually confined the people from the same city or geographical area getting together.
Well, guess what? I can already get in touch with the people I know. It’s called a phone. I can already meet people in my city, it’s called a bar. That social networking extends these relationship is kind of interesting, but ultimately moot.
There’s very little new on the Internet that’s about connecting random strangers who might actually get along.
There’s a reason for this, of course. It’s because there’s very little different from The Internet and The Mob Down The Street. Time was, you used to have to want to be here. A minimal effort needed to made. Setup a modem (or promise your geek friend a blow job if he’d do it for you, then frighten him away with your new vampire fangs), figure out software, be patient enough while it all came in over copper wires.
The most important internet levy was the barrier to publishing. It wasn’t that hard to get online, but if you wanted to publish something you had to either 1a. Know how to run a webserver or 1b. Pay a little tax to have someone run one for you and 2. Learn what HTML was. Not rocket science, but it kept out the tiny little banalities. (Although it did mean too many engineers were about, but they were pretty easy to spot and ignore)
Then, a bunch of businessmen and businessboys decided they wanted to sell push button publishing software to the venture capitalists, which, after a few twists and turns, brings us to today where any fucking moron can publish.
When everyone’s special no-one is.
And when everyone on the internet = everyone1 on the planet, you think twice before making real connections with total strangers.
But that’s media. It’s always changing, always morphing. Last year’s media becomes this year’s content for the new media. Like all media of the 20th century, the internet is pendulum-swinging back to a broadcast model, where the important things online are put out by a concentrated majority.
Things will eventually swing back. Media is always moving between hot and cold. Things like JPEG magazine and ZeFrank’s The ORG might be signaling a cooling off and a swing back to Internet communities creating quality things. (Which would be ironic in the case of ZeFrank, since The Year of The Show was a classic case of broadcast, centralized media. Also, it was funnier than shit)
My point? I’m not that interested in The Internet as culture these days. I still like making it work, and it’s still a daily part of my life, but it doesn’t excite me anymore. The situation isn’t helped by the fact that in the past year and a half I’ve hit my stride mentally, physically, emotionally and even spiritually. I’m far more interesting in life these days than I am in shifting about electromagnetic patterns imprinted on platters.
1. By everyone, of course, we mean the minority who have access to the time, money and technology.
Originally Posted March 24, 2007