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The Net Revolution's Backlash
We don't have a paperless world; work isn't easier, or even demonstrably more efficient; nation-states are not disintegrating; the new global economy hasn't improved the lot of the vast majority of the world's population; new software has nearly destroyed the notion of privacy; our citizens or political leaders haven't been reenergized by the sweeping possibilities of e-democracy. Our new President says the Net can turn children's hearts "dark" and murderous, and Amazon has yet to make a buck.
People can communicate, transfer information, make airline reservations, place auction bids, plunge into sophisticated games, hack any system on the planet, create alternate personalities, self-publish themselves, yak with their grandkids and amass tons of free stuff from music to lecture notes to building blueprints.
A seminal promise of the Computer Revolution -- for many, the point -- was to bring information to everybody and make lives easier. But is this the revolution? Does this really change life for the better, or even change it much at all? A few years ago, the idea of the Net -- its freedom and openness, its ethos of sharing information -- seemed stunning, radical. But they don't seem very revolutionary at the moment. In fact, the reconsideration and doubts -- a slowdown, a backlash -- are upon us.
Consider Napster, perhaps the Net's most popular single application and favorite media symbol. An entity that drew 62 million people in just two years -- a perhaps unprecedented accomplishment in business history -- is fighting to exist at all.
Napster's crippling can't be read as anything but a portent of what's to come. File-sharing is by no means shut down, but the bad guys have won one of the first great wars between corporatism and free information advocates, and the victory has handed them a substantial legal precedent.
So the Net is no closer than it was several years ago to finding a workable model for distributing culture fairly, legally and rationally; in fact, that goal seems even further off.
Napster probably means far less in practical terms than its media attention indicates, but it's a handy metaphor for this transition from one era to another, with the attendant confusion, turmoil and promise. Napster's series of defeats suggests that the grown-ups are finally taking charge, that the wild frontier is closing down.
The Net and the Web have revolutionized certain areas like academic and scientific research. But they've done little to eradicate illiteracy or poverty, or alter education for most students. The search for virtual community remains ephemeral. The Digital Nation has not emerged to create a new kind of rational, meaningful democracy. In fact, the latest innovations in software are complex filtering, blocking and moderation systems that permit people to pre-select the ideas and informatiion they're willing to receive. This is not what Jefferson had in mind.
There are plentiful examples of the way the Net can empower individuals -- in particular by providing access to information previously unavailable or prohibitively expensive. People have access to all kinds of medical, legal and other information previously sold and closed off to them, and to new avenues of expression from webpages to mailing lists to MUD's. .
The Net has given small entrepeneurs, threatened by the Wal-Marting of the country, a new opportunity to prosper. And it's creating countless smaller gathering spots for micro-communities in need of contact with one another -- the sick, the elderly, hobbyists, professionals, movielovers, gays.
Meanwhile, however, the computer industry, the heart and soul of this supposed revolution, is paying the price for years of arrogance, of confusing and overpriced products, of lousy customer service, of unfulfilled promises. All these have fueled the public perception that the people involved in creating the computer revolution are callous and greedy, that they can't really be trusted to create a computer network that people will be able to use readily and benefit from.
In fact, one of the striking characteristics of this revolution is the sense that the people making it have failed to keep in mind, communicate with or connect to the people using it, and upon whom their future ultimately depends.
More backlash: Retailers, distributors and other commercial midde-men have launched a broad assault, waging a quiet but successful campaign to block e-commerce. Car dealers, wine merchants and music merchants are lobbying for laws to shut down online rivals. Internet lawyers, almost nonexistent just a decade ago, are firmly entrenched in today's cyberspace, whether you see them as partners or villains.
A new report (not yet online) from Washington think tank the Progressive Policy Institute catalogs how pervasive the rush for protection has become. It notes that in l997, Texas optometrists lobbied successfully for a law requiring out-of-state contact lens providers to obtain original, hand-signed prescriptions before shipping lenses to customers. The law makes ordering via the Web, which generated half of 1-800-Contacts' estimated $145 million in sales last year, much more time-consuming.
There is an Internet Predicament, Newsweek's Robert Samuelson wrote last month: the Net is a great giveaway, but not yet a great business, because there is simply too much distributed for free or priced below cost. Online sales of goods are still a tiny fraction of retails sales; what has really thrived online is information, something tricky to charge for.
In fact, information has driven so much of the so-called tech boom that consumers are becoming overwhelmed by data -- even blessed endeavors like Disney's Go.com have found themselves one more dot on a crowded graph.
There is also a failure of community. Early cyber-models like San Francisco's WELL have turned out to be isolated examples of virtual community, not really a harbinger of things to come.
Naturally, questions and doubts about the revolution are not far behind.
In The Social Life of Information, John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid worry about losing the value of face-to-face personal and office encounters. Stories told around the water cooler are critical to businesses and institutions, they write, offering nuance, cues and personal connections that are essential in real communications, but which are sometimes lost online.
Narration, they write, is a key, if unexpected tool for workers or employers. "The constant storytelling -- about problems and solutions, about disasters and triumphs, over breakfast, lunch and coffee -- serves a number of overlapping purposes," say the authors. These purposes are often poorly served via e-mail, IRC or instant messaging.
Among the calls for change is The Unfinished Revolution, a new book from MIT computer scientist Michael Dertouzos. Looking at the rate at which technology and its attendant devices are taking us over, he laments, "We wait endlessly for our computers to boot up, and for bulky Web pages to paint themselves on our screens. We stand perplexed in front of incomprehensible system messages, and wait in frustration on the phone for computerized assistance. We constantly add software upgrades, enter odd instructions, fix glitches, only to sit in maddening silence when our machines crash, forcing us to start all over again, hoping against hope that they didn't take a piece of our intellectual hide with them."
And it's going to get worse, Dertouzo argues. If the quirky machines give us grief now, imagine the message we'll get when there are 10 times as many of these "creatures biting at you."
We need reform, Dertouzos says, a new plan for "human-centric computing" that will serve, not frustrate people, and work as well for the non-tech world as for the tech universe.
The idea of human-centric computing makes sense, though it does have a familiar ring. Haven't we heard such promises before? Computers were supposed to have surpassed humans in cognitive thinking long before now. But that's only one of the unkept promises of a revolution that has already made too many, and that's proved less than revolutionary.
Next: Broken Promises, Failed Expectations. Has the public lost faith?
Every decision thats being made is being made by human beings, for human beings. Is it out of touch with some ill defined utopia that makes Katz feel all fuzzy inside, certainly, but that should not be mistaken for what humanity is.
If the net is cold, alienating, money obsessed, balkanized and uninviting it is because it reflects humanity all too well.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Yes, the "Internet Revolution" is out of touch with human beings. Mainly though, it's because human beings are out of touch with themselves and other human beings. The Internet Revolution has served to further this by allowing an already withdrawn group of people to withdraw even further within themselves!
that an airport toliet is better than his computer? We talked about this yesterday. Jon go read that and understand why you are wrong.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
All those stupid business men who have invented web technologies, thinking they were going to get rich. They're ticked because we've taken all the new gadgets and they haven't got a penny back. The internet is a great revolution. It has served the people well. Unfortunately, the people picking up the check want their piece.
That's why you see stricter and stricter rules for domain names. They haven't made any money off of the net. They don't know how to. But they're going to kill us or themselves trying
But Yogi, the RIAA won't like that.
Katz once again has believed the market hype of the media whores who pushed the whole "internet will change all our lives".
Look at all the good things on the internet today - you can share files, you can seek tech help, you can waste time on weblogs... You can buy a holiday, you can research a car spec, all these things are good and possible.
What is evil about the internet? Kiddie pr0n, corporations subverting open standards, and marketing. Without marketing there wouldn't be 35 spam messages sitting in my inbox. Without marketing we wouldn't have had the boom bust dotcom era.
The meltdown in dotcom stocks is a symptom of how marketing and PR are destroying everything that's is good in the world, and not just on the net. Why do people get killed for their Nikes? Because the killers saw the marketing and *had* to have the trainers.
The fact of the matter is the Internet has improved my life. It's easy to download latest patches & drivers and look for help when I'm at work. I can plan evenings out with my friends over email, or offer them sympathy if they're down. I can track down hard to find books. Small things, but my life is arguably better than pre internet days.
What the marketers saw was communities like the WELL and thought that was for everybody. The thing about places like that is that they attract a similar kind of people, where these people can then found communities.
Most of the more cohesive communities online that I belong to are tech based. I think this is because us techs resent the way the internet has turned out and look for our own little oasis, free from the lusers that infest the net today. These communities are the envy of the media luvvies who push the net-chages-everything argument, because the media people are now realising that you can't build it - it must be allowed to grow. And most lusers aren't willing to go through that curve.
In short, as ntk.net says - "They stole our revolution. Now we're stealing it back".
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
So, let's not pretend it's a revolution, eager to return to what was before, but accept that it is... and extend it into the future. Instead of analyzing its effect on all sorts of established patterns, I think a much more fruitful approach to the Internet Revolution is to see what things have been created or sustained or strengthened entirely within the realm of the Internet. I think Tiananmen Square and SubComandante Marcos are two excellent examples. I was online at the time of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, and I remember the Chinese gov't shut down ALL media access to the events there. They shut down all video, all phones, even faxes. But the Internet was unknown to them (it was the late 80s), and they forgot to shut down the Internet. Students ran in from the scene, logged on to their university e-mail accounts, and sent passionate and detailed e-mails about what was happening on their streets. I remember being quite informed on the topic, then turning to the News at 5:00 and finding nothing but obscure references to something happening in China. I didn't know how to organize that information then, but now I do: that was the first time the Internet played a significant role in undermining "official" strategies. By the time the Chinese gov't got around to shutting down the Internet, which they never did, it was way too late--the truth was already out.
A few years later, I watched Subcomandante Marcos restructure the revolutionary value of the Internet over the course of dozens of e-mails which revealed a cryptic poetic genius who was extremely well-prepared for an online war, playing against politicians who kept trying to respond to him with plain old-fashioned violence. The events of the past few weeks, where 150,000 people gathered to cheer him in Mexico City, where the Mexican prez Fox sent several hundred police officers to PROTECT Marcos, instead of what they were doing eight years ago, which was sending assassins to ambush him (several ambushes failed against him, because he was simply better informed than the Feds)...
The point is, that we should not look at the Internet/Information revolution with the language of its predecessor, which I consider the paranoia revolution (which began in about 1930, and is winding down now in the face of the incredible access to information coming to us via the Internet). We should look at it within its own terms, and continue to build it out of the thin air from which it was created. Remember, no one, not a single soul, predicted where we'd be with the Internet fifteen years ago. It was just a research tool til 1994...
Well then, you ask, what is that new language? You're reading it. Look at us. We're geeks. Used to be, we'd have to make a living as circus-sideshow freaks. Now an incredible legitimacy is given to programmers, and our demand for Open Source approaches to the world. This is rich material, and I hope John Katz turns his ability to synthesize themes by careful and targeted research to realizing that the Information Revolution is one where we can only make scant reference to the pre-open-source world, and hold firmly to the vision that comes with this revolution so we can turn it over to our grandkids and know that we didn't just let Walmart and McDonalds and Pepsico coopt it from us like they so want to. Viva la Google! Viva la Amazon! Viva la Revolucion!
information is immaterial
My major gripe with this issue is the generalization that the Net was going to answer so much for so many.
The Net as a tool was, and is, revolutionary. You can't deny the significance it has had to how people think and do nowadays. It has quickly become a prevalent, commonplace aspect of world culture, and that can not be ignored. People have learned about, and will continue to develop, the use of the internet as an information and communication resource.
The schism that we're struggling with, though, is due to the disappointment that the Net didn't solve our social and economic problems as well. How can we realistically expect the introduction of a new form of communication to immediately create a new form of government? That's what people expected in a global community, isn't it? That's why they're so disappointed.
More striking, though, is the fact that people were looking to solve their economic woes with the Net as a silver bullet. The entire world attacked this "communication tool" with a rabid fervor to fill their pockets with money, a decidely capitalistic ideal. The problem is that significant parts of the world are still struggling with capitalism. It takes time to implement a social structure like that and the insane ballooning and deflation of economic success is simply a result of "too much, too soon."
Will the Net succeed as an economic medium? You bet. Will everyone benefit? Absolutely not. To start with, you have establishments (read: corporations) which are in place and are fervently opposed to anyone else getting their piece of the pie. Entertainment conglomerates are the "Evil Empire" of the moment, but what did we really expect? Did we really think that they would allow our global community to affect their bottom line without consequence?!?
Those who expected that are the most disappointed, I think. But I also believe that overcoming disappointment is the key. Once that is done, though re-evaluating and simplifying our expectations of the Net, we wll find that the road to our global community (or our economic success, or whatever your personal intent is) is much easier, and more satisfying, to travel.
The zeal started to wear off when people began to realize that the Web is a real thing, not an imaginary concept. It has limits. It is finite. Once tech-ignorant investors started realizing this, they pulled their money back out.
Dotcoms fell, and took with them the industry that had developed overnight to support them. Hardware and software companies were hit hard because they overestimated the boom. Everyone got caught up in the frenzy and started making bad decisions.
The Web is still here. It is still growing at a steady rate in size, usefulness, and publicity. In ten years, it will still be here, and will still be growing.
Spiffy Tiffany!
I don't remember the internet being created with all these lofty goals in mind. The defense department just wanted to link their computers together in a way that made it difficult for enemies to disrupt communications. I think you're confusing what YOU (and a few others) thought was going to happen when things took off in the mid 90s.
The foundation of education is reading, writing, clear thinking, and basic mathematics. All other education can be built on that foundation.
And, oddly enough, the net is not needed, or even particularly helpful, in teaching the foundation. Instead, what is needed are some books, writing materials, and a motivated teacher who knows how to read, write, think, and do math. (I don't necessarily mean teacher as in a school, but rather one who teaches in whatever context.)
Give a kid the foundation, along with some moral guidance, and you will have done the best you can to equip him to avoid poverty and ignorance for the rest of his life.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
Apparently we're doing it all wrong.
I thought that one of the obvious benefits of networking my computer with everyone else was being able to send pictures of my kids to my parents. This is a good thing. It makes everyone except Jon Katz happy.
If you expected the revolution to turn out differently, too bad. It's in the nature of revolutions to be unpredictable.
--
#include "stdio.h"
When I want to find out a piece of mundane information, no matter what it is, 99 times out of 100 I'll be able to find it quickly and easily on the web somewhere. Scroll back 15 years, and what was I doing? going through a card catalog at a library, or hitting an encyclopedia.
Now I'm not saying books have lost their place. One of the dangers is the net is people paying less attention to our paper legacy. But the amount of information on the web is staggering, and it actually isn't all that hard to find what you want, be it a snippet of MATLAB code to do wavelet transforms, a list of roman emporers, or names and reviews of all of Peter Jackson's films. It's in your face in 1-3 minutes. That kind of information turnaround was unthinkable 15 years ago, and its effect on my productivity is profound.
Now the net can hamper productivity as well, by providing easy distractions. But there's only person for me to blame when I allow myself to waste time. I don't blame the automotive industry if I hurt myself in a car wreck.
I think Katz is too cynically dismissive of the positive changes that have occurred as a result of the internet.
The Net and the Web have revolutionized certain areas like academic and scientific research. But they've done little to eradicate illiteracy or poverty, or alter education for most students. The search for virtual community remains ephemeral. Well if you think about it... Unlike TV, radio, and movies, to use the Net as a source for entertainment and infomation requires the ability to read. I wonder if, as the current generation of schoolchildern grows up and the internet becomes widespread in schools, libraries, and homes, we will see an increase in literacy. But even if it doesn't (though I think it will), why should it? Prehaps we should expect the net to end world hunger and bring peace to the middle east as well? The net is just another medium for the transfer of information. Ridiculously high expectations is what created the dotcom bust to begin with. Now how we have had "revolutions in academic and scientific research" but no changes in "education for most students" is beyond me. Even when I was in high school I was able to access research materials on the net that I would not have had access to otherwise. And the "search for virtual community"? What with the comment about moderation in his last post, this makes me think that Katz is becoming disillusioned with slashdot, maybe? Face it, John, the Net is simply not your place. Leave it to the younger generation; I interact with hundreds of people online each day through listservs, IRC, and even webboards like slashdot. Some of them I would even call friends... Ephemeral community, indeed! apologies for the rant, but that's my two cents. People need to get over the whole "revolution thing", and use the net for the tool that it is.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
Psuedo-sociologists like Katz get excited about
about events in their short lives and lose the
overall long-term picture.
The communications revolution has been steadily
progressing since the invention of the telegraph
in 1844. The telegraph spawned two elements:
intaneous communication and mass media (newspapers).
Everything since has been an elaboration.
These issues have occured before and will occur
again.
The "revolution" hasn't given you what you wanted *YET*? So wait. This massive change - which BTW has only just BARELY begun - is not about any one person, or issue, or race, or creed, or government. And is not going to be stopped by any one person, or country, or global corporation, or whatever. The Info-genie is out and can't be put back in. It's almost like you forgot that The Information Age is about providing information to everyone that wants it - not about any of the little things you mentioned. Napster? So what. Taxes? So what.
You want an accurate picture of the relevance of these things? Speed limits. The laws are there but no one cares. No one follows them. And no one would DARE make a car that only went 55MPH. Wait! Before you say DVD let me say again - so what? Once massive bandwith is everywhere who will care? Your DVD player will be as relevant as an old laserdisk player.
Just wait till some crappy band steals your nic.
No, nation states are dissolving and no, the net has not ushered in a Brave New World overnight. Yes, it has created new problems because it does not relate directly to people in the way you seem to think it should.
Those minor problems are beans compared to the great strides that the net has made for people all around the world. The reason that corporations and countries such as China fear the net is that they know that it empowers individuals like no medium has ever done before. It allows them to communcate and share ideas like never before. Worse, in their eyes, it allows them to think new, alien thoughts.
Example: How many Americans were anime fans before the net brought Anime into a semi-mainstream position? Now, they show Tenchi Muyou, Gundam Wing, and Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon on Cartoon Network. This means that people from the East and West are communicating despite the language and culture barriers. We're relating to eachother instead of the computers!
That, in my mind at least, is the important thing.
More importantly and more socially relevant, Americans got a view of *both* sides of the war during the Serbian bombing during the last half of the Clinton administration. We got told by the gov't that they were doing everything they could to keep casualities to a minimum and nobody was really being hurt, but when it came down to it, each ane every one of us could look to Eastern european websites for a view of what was happing by the people it was happening to.
Business has not been affected positively by the internet you say? Bullshit. I work for a firm that does tens of thousands of dollars a day worth of business over the internet. The trick? We have a sane business model that relies on charging our users for our services and products that are in rare supply LIKE ANY SANE BUSINESS MODEL SHOULD!
As for the fact that computers are not as good as they should be? Well I callenge you to start writing everything you put down on an old IBM 8086. Computers are doing just fine and are clipping along at a rate that makes most people unable to afford to keep up with technology. People's expectation of how easy, fast, and cheap techonology needs to be have been watching too much Star Trek.
Katz, you need to keep in mind that you're still in the middle of the computer age and that advances and leaps and strides are going on all around you. Keep an eye out and you might see them.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Sure, many people had glowing visions of what the 'net would do for society and, seven years after the mass mobilization towards those visions, not all of the predictions have panned out.
Isn't this about par for the course? I mean, the net itself is an incredibly complex system, and here a lot of us were trying to predict its behavior in and effect on an even more complex system -- human society.
That we got some of it wrong -- no, that some of the things we predicted did not happen when we said they would -- should not be unnerving or surprising.
And I dispute that Napster has had a small effect. While Napster as a service may be done, nobody is just going to "forget" about the possibilities it spawned... does anyone really believe that the record companies can put the genie back in the bottle? Do millions of people not think differently about intellectual property and the power of oligopolies because of the attention Napster has received in mainstream media?
I think we have a tendancy to think of revolutions as events that can be easily summed up in a chapter in a history book. Revolutions take time, and I think we're still in the midst of one -- too close to make sweeping declarations that the revolution is over, and that it didn't matter.
The fact is, only you and people like you ever wanted any of those things. When you talk about being out of touch with society, look to yourself for a change. Your the one who (in Wired for example) espoused pointless revolutionary propaganda about how astounding the information revolution would be. Meanwhile, people who knew how to code went out and made it all happen. Maybe you should think about your qualifications as a Internet critic.
When you look at who the Internet was created by, and why, you will understand why the world is not fundamentally different. Coding is hard, and it's completely understandable that the people who do it out of the goodness of their heard (or whatever moves those fingers) will do what they are interested in. Here is a hint: they are interested in communication, and making society a better place, not tearing down the walls of the Nation-State.
Your fundamental problem is in assuming that what you want from the Net is possible, desireable or even rational. What most people want is email or chat (the real killer-apps, not napster). Hence, the existence of email and chat.
The more you write, the more disconnected you become, and it's kind of sad. Pretty soon you'll be as important in the world as beatnicks are today. It's too bad, because everybody loves to hear your oppinion.
Yes, I'm still a junky. Are you still a bitch?
Also you contridict yourself with the whole Wal-Mart argument. Small time merchants aren't backlashing against Wal-Marts, by getting on the Internet these merchants are doing the exact same thing-- offering everything you want in one place... I happen to like Wal-Mart. I don't want to go to 6 different places to buy six different things.
My last point is that businesses who lobby or use litigation against other businesses is nothing new and also has nothing to do with the Internet. 1-800-Contact does business over the Internet yes, but over the phone as well. I don't think that merchants look just for companies who use the Internet to sell products, they look for companies that are undermining their bottom line, yes its wrong, its anti-competiative, and its stupid to bring up in this article because it will happen anyway. The board-of-directors of these companies are not sitting in dark rooms trying to bring the destruction of the Internet.
Face facts Jon, the Internet is a tool. It is a very good tool, it provides me with a job. It is not a utopia, or a cure all for the world's problems, people don't suddenly stop acting like people just because they are in a chat room. the internet is not a revolution, its a tool and no amount of Jon-Katz paranoia is going to change that.
The more I read your articles the more I'm convinced that you are nothing more than a well written Perl script.
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
The Anti-Blog
The futue isn't kept on a Microsoft Project chart. There's no "must" no "have to" about change. God didn't post a plan saying when specific technological and social changes must occur.
So things didn't turn out like some of us expected? That's normal. Things aren't what we wanted out of the technology boom? Learn your lessons and move on.
Forget "had to", "must have", "should", and "didn't". The future is what we make it. Sitting around waiting for something miraculous to happen because of some ephemeral predictions is ridiculous. Complaining things didn't turn out like we want doesn't fix problems.
Too many people expected the Internet Revolution to happen to them - but that they didn't have to participate actively. Well, a Revolution needs Revolutionaries - so if you want changes, get off your backside and make them.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
People get killed for their Nikes because there exist animals who have no respect for human life. Those animals exist in large part because they were not given moral training.
I don't like marketers either, but you can't hang every evil in the world on them.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
Sensationalist journalism at best. Utter crap at worst.
...to bring
information to everybody and make lives easier. But is this the revolution? Does this really
change life for the better, or even change it much at all?
... and when did Napster become the good guy? Napster is just another one of the privacy invading corporatist powers of which you speak, but somehow because they facilitate and promote copyright infringement they are the good guys? Please.
We don't have a paperless world; work isn't easier, or even demonstrably more efficient
Isn't easier? Are you trying to say that typing an html document and posting it on the web isn't easier than printing it on paper and shipping across the country with a fleet of trucks? Do you have any evidence or are you just spewing forth?
YES! Knowledge is the single most freeing "object" in existence. Freedom is good! Revolution - drastic changes in people's lives - cannot happen unless they wish for something better. Knowledge brings hope and desire for change. You don't need permission to be free. You just do it.
the bad guys have won one of the first great wars between corporatism and free information advocates
a new plan for "human-centric computing" that will serve, not frustrate people, and work as well for the non-tech world as for the tech universe
One word: Google.
In case it's not obvious, I have a serious problem with this whole article. Freedom, revolution, power, knowledge - these are not things that are given to you by your politicians. They are not things that corporations can take from you. They are concepts that exist within the realm of the human mind, not government or corporate monoliths. The only time you lose your Freedom is if you let yourself be controlled.
There are a great many people including myself who have been able to obtain great amounts of knowledge in a short period of time through the use of the Internet that would have taken hundreds of years to obtain without the Internet. Because of this knowledge, I live in a safer neighborhood, I eat healthier food, I enjoy more entertaining passtimes, and my overall quality of life is better.
Don't bitch about the failure of the Internet because an article on CNN and some guy in McDonalds told you that life sucks.
A choice of masters is not freedom
went
Stocks
and
then
they
came
back
down
very sad.
--
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Blaming the woes of the world on marketing is one of the most backwards things in the world. Marketing plays a very important role in just about any society. To say that someone kills someone else because of a marketing campaign is just ignorant. The fact is, marketers are not all powerful. Their job is to present the idea that their product presents more value to people than anyone elses. This, by itself, doesn't create value any more than me standing in the middle of the road and shouting "I'm better than everone else does." People know that because I say that (no matter how crafty I am in saying it), that I can't make it true. The problem you describe lies in the audience. It lies in a culture not ready to truly handle the marketplace of ideas it has built. Commercials and advertisements are really just one way of transmitting information. The REAL problem is that people have become quite bad at sifting through information, and have developed a habit of beleiving whatever information reaches their ears first. This, to me, has been the thorn in the side of the so called revolution. I still beleive that the real revolution is coming. In our zeal to run at "internet time", we've lost site of the fact that revolutions take a long time to develop. In the case of the Internet, only when the consumer is able to parse and understand ALL of the information presented to them, will the revolution occur. I think that the so called generation D, growing up in an information economy, will develop many of these skills on their own. I also beleive that technology, the same technology that has become so good at distributing information, will also become quite adept at helping people to understand it all. I'm reminded of some personal experiences I had during High School in Arkansas. I noticed that many people took on the religious preferences of whatever church they attended last. It was bizarre. People would be touting the Baptist message one day, until their friend drug them to a methodist church...which of course changed everything. I came to realize that these people took the man behind the pulpit as the authority on how the information within the Bible was to be understood. This is exactly the problem we face now, and until we can fix that the revolution will always be just out of reach.
Katz, do you even *read* the comments posted to your articles?
... well, what? ... information? I don't know.
Several days ago, for example. Numerous posters took you to task (myself included) for talking about all this stuff as if it's "revolutionary" or in some way indicate a "revolution."
For my particular take on your misreading of Hannah Arendt, see: Katz at his worst.
The problem with your rhetoric -- both here and in your previous story -- is that it lacks essential content. Do you even know what you mean -- nevermind Arendt -- when you say "revolution." Do you understand the social, cultural, and economic forces that drive a "revolution?"
If so, please explain. Please explain the Katzian version of "revolution". I mean, for chrissake Katz, *everyone* says the "net is a revolution." Hell, we oughta get a gigantic pair of those chattering teeth on top of the White House that say nothing but: "The web is a revolution. The web is a revolution."
What, exactly, is the web revolting *against*? The answer is nothing. The web is evolving, yes. But culture is also *evolving.* How do you separate the two? What makes the evolution of the "net" particularly *revolutionary?*
My answer? Nothing. There's nothing remotely *revolutionary* about the net. It's become a puppet to corporations and a vast landscape of, well, the same stuff that makes up the vast landscape of culture: information, bits and pieces of this and that, and, yes, an occasionally stellar piece of
Sometimes, yeah, you get what you need through the web. You're looking for a good price on a computer, you go to the web, and BAM! there it is: A GOOD PRICE ON A COMPUTER.
Fair enough.
But is this revolutionary? Is this changing culture in a particularly vital and particular way? No, of course it's not. Why? Because I can go down to my local store and find a good price on a computer. The only difference is that with one form of purchase I can sit at my desk and with the other form of purchase I actually have to go outside.
So, what then: the net is "revolutionizing" our physical modes of travel? Either way I get the computer. Either way I probably get the same price. The only difference is that with one I must move my physical body more than six inches.
Wow. What a revolution.
Yes, that's a silly example. But it's not far off. Tell me what's "revolutionary" about the web? Or even about technology? I look and see people earning money, doing jobs, having babies, families, marrying, dying -- no different than in those dark "pre-web" days.
I see a lot of businesses with dumb business plans and even dumber executives. (Ever read the 'Organization Man', Katz?)
You're talking like you're still gee-whized by all this web stuff. And, yeah, if you still are "gee-whized" by this stuff, fine. You're entitled to your gee-whizziness. But, please -- and this goes for all the rest of the so-called "visionaries" or (as they probably prefer to be called) the "cultural critics" be careful and canny with your analyses. Why? Because you're essentially picking out odd specifics to highlight, what? -- the same culture that's always existed and that is now (as was then) always *evolving* -- but revolting? No. I'm not convinced. Who are the revolutionaries? The tech guys? The web developers?
Please. Give me a break. They're hacks like everyone else. We're all hacks. That's not a bad thing, see. But that's not *revolutionary*. And least not in the context that Katz is providing.
"Gee whiz! Look at all this! PRetty soon we'll all be travelling in spaceships! There will be no more hunger! No more war! No more conflict!"
AHA! You've confirmed what I always suspected. MY computers seem to be serving General Protection, and Kernel Panic.
Ok my karma is maxed out. When do I become Enlightened?
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From the top...
We don't have paperless offices, mainly bcos there's some stuff that works better on paper. For example, reading paper is much easier on the eyes than reading screen. But a lot of stuff _does_ work better on PC. Every time someone says they don't see the advantages of a PC, I point them at a word processor. For the investment of a few hours learning basic commands (which is all you'll mostly need), you can write your own documents, format them correctly and proof-read them yourself. Compare to the manual system where you'd write something long-hand (or typed if you were lucky), redraft it to reorder stuff, pass it to a secretary to be retyped and formatted, proof-read it, send it back to have errors corrected, where the non-technical secretary has misread your technical formulae, etc, etc.. And now tell me this isn't saving us time, and I'll laugh in your face.
The latest innovations in software may well be filtering systems, etc., and I've no doubt that this wasn't what Jefferson had in mind. But then he never planned on freeing the slaves either (him and Lincoln were both quite fond of having an oppressed minority). Certainly great historical politicians can be useful to learn from, but don't pretend they know everything - they were just as screwed up as our politicians.
Whether the anti-Napster ppl are the good guys or the bad guys depends on (a) whether you're on the payer or payee side of the music coin, and (b) whether you regard downloading of music you don't already own (and have no intentions of buying) as wrong. Make up your own mind, but don't expect us all to blindly fall in behind you. The argument Napster had was "we've got lots of free music", not "we're trying to make the record companies see sense and charge reasonable prices". The latter may well come to pass, but Napster's initial aim (as shown quite clearly in testimony) was piracy, pure and simple.
Jon's argument in this article is, "the revolution hasn't done what I thought it would". Wise up. Every revolution promises to solve all your problems, and it's only after the revolution that you find whether it actually worked. And the answer is usually "sort of". Maybe the Net hasn't promised everything that all the wild-eyed boosterism promised, but only suckers fall for that. The rest of us think, "Do we need that?" or "Will that work?" and get a glimpse of reality. If you can't tell real life from an advertising campaign, you've been watching TV too much!
Does making more information available make life easier? It certainly does for me when I'm designing electronics - today, I can download a datasheet in a minute or two, where a few years ago I'd have to order it and wait several days for it to arrive. I'm willing to trade that increase in productivity off against deleting the odd bit of spam and the occasional Microsoft crash - I think it's worth it. If Jon and his mate Michael Dertouzos, whose book he's plugging, don't think so, he's entirely free to return to his typewriter. We're not stopping you, Jon, it's a free world. But realise that doing this will impinge on your ability to email in articles like this. Make your choice.
And much of the article (roughly the last fifth) is a rail against buggy software. Sure, there's plenty of it about, so why not use something more stable? Win2k is more stable than its predecessors, and Linux is apparently more stable than any Windows. Applications-wise, some are good, some aren't. There's plenty of feedback on how NOT to build a user interface (the Interface Hall of Shame is just one), so all you need to do is keep your eye on the ball and you're away. And whilst there's many reports on buggy and unhelpful applications, you never hear much about the ones which quietly get on with the job, the same way that it's only the inaccurate weather forecasts that ppl remember.
I won't argue that face-to-face communications isn't valuable. But if people who are geographically separated have to work on a project together, they have to work in a different manner than they would if they sat across the hallway from one another. (Yes, I know: Duh!) Electronic collaboration can work well provided the people involved (including management) understand that the way that they're going to interact is going to be different. I've seen it work and had it work for me but it takes some getting used to.
Organizations that rely heavily on oral communications seem to have the most trouble (and the most resistant to) adapting to an online workgroup arrangement. At least in my experience, anyway. They are in the habit, for whatever reason, of not writing anything down. Those new to online collaboration tend to flail around when they're forced into putting their thoughts down on paper or into a online forum database. These are the organizations that never follow up a meeting with an email (or, heck, even a hardcopy memo) with notes of what was discussed and decided. Everyone's idea of what went on during that meeting differs and eventually you'll have people going in different directions based on their unique memories of what was decided in the meeting. I've always described those situations as ``progress via Brownian motion''. My motto is: ``Oral tradition has no place in project management''. Works for me anyway. Of course, there's always one person who thinks that what they have to say is so important that everyone will write it down for them. Those are the folks who'll torpedo any online collaboration.
On the other hand, having a 12 hour time difference in team members work schedules like you described would present some problems. But it's nothing that couldn't be solved by both sides shifting their work schedules a bit to have a little bit of overlap. I wouldn't want to do this for a project that was going to run for several months, though. And you might be able to shift schedules around a bit to have overlap, say, one day a week so people can actually get a conference call set up.
I actually prefer situations where tream members communicate via an online forum. Even when there isn't
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