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The End of Cyber BS
Despite the staggering amount of hype everyone has had to endure (and some of us have contributed to), Weinberger's premise is that the Web hasn't been hyped enough. The Web, he claims, is not only altering social institutions like business and government, but transforming fundamental concepts of our culture: space, time, reality itself.
This is the sort of stuff that gets publishers, media people and academics breathing heavily, even though reality suggests that a) it simply isn't so, and b) such declarations are the intellectual equivalent of tech support: the more deeply you look, the less seems to be there. The outside world continues to see the Net as an atom-smashing alien force, when it is, in fact, a transforming technology whose future nature and impact remains unclear. There is the persistent belief out there that for the Net and the Web to be interesting, they must be portrayed as changing everything about everything, and the search for the seer who can explain how has been relentless, although not by the book-buying public. This has given rise to a whole genre of Cyber BS.
Weinberger is obviously bright and observant. And he's quite correct in suggesting that the hyperlinking era the Web begins is astounding, even revolutionary. But is it changing the nature of our lives? Decide for yourselves.
Weinberger proposes four concepts (plus the nature of life itself) that the Web is altering: he uses eBay as an illustration.
- Space. eBay is a Web space that occupies no space, whose links are based not on contiguity but on human interest. eBay demonstrates that the geography of the Web is as ephemeral as human interest iself, each of us looking across the space that is eBay and seeing vastly different landscapes -- of games, quilts, Star Wars memorabilia, battery chargers.
- Time. The real world, Weinberger says, is a series of ticks to which schedules are tied. As he investigated different kinds of eBay auctions, checking back every few hours to see if he'd been outbid on quilts, "I felt as if I were returning to a story that was in progress, waiting for me whenever I wanted. I could break off in the middle when, for example, my son came home, and go back whenever I wanted."
- Self. Buyers and sellers on eBay adopt a name by which they will be known. The real world person behind the handle firewife30 may have other eBay identities, as well. Unlike non-virtual selves, these eBay selves are intermittent and, most important, they are in writing.
- Knowledge. Weinberger began his eBay experience ignorant about quilts. But he learned by listening to other quilters and wound up knowing quite a bit.
The upshot? "If a simple auction at eBay is based on new assumptions about space, time, self and knowledge, the Web is more than a place for disturbed teen-agers to try out roles and more than a good place to buy cheap quilts."
The Web has sent an enormous jolt through our culture, he continues, zapping our economy, our ideas about the sharing of creative works, possibly even our institutions such as religion and government. Suppose that the Web is a new world we're just beginning to inhabit. We can't characterize ourselves without simultaneously drawing a picture of how the world seems to us, Weinberger says, nor can we describe our world without describing the type of people we are. If we are entering a new world, then we are also becoming new people.
Heady stuff. Weinberger, an NPR commentator and the publisher of JOHO (Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization) understands hyperlinks and their stunning impact. It isn't as if his observations are wrong. The things he sees are new, interesting and significant.
But his book also reminds us that this age of Cybertheorizing began to die with the demise of the original Wired. This is bad news for over-heated tech writers and academics feasting on cyber-culture courses. In case Weinberger hasn't noticed -- and he hasn't, if the book is any indication -- the Web these days is mostly about sex, free news, entertainment and retailing. For better or worse, we remain the same people we were. You could argue that the Web has triggered a monumental wave of hostility, self-referential blabber and commercialism. In the post dot-com era, we see that the Net and the Web aren't changing everything about the world, just taking the things people have always liked to do -- shop, read, yak, play, masturbate -- and making them easier. Business and politicians are also drearily unchanged. Even the hackers have been largely tamed by lawsuits and the numerous fences sprouting all over the cyber frontier.
"Once we are on the Web," Weinberger claims, "we find the ground has dropped out from beneath us. The normal constraints, on which we have built the common sense that guides us, fall away. And so we get to improvise and to invent... We are sharing this new world not because we have to but because we want to. We are sharing this world not because we find ourselves next to someone due to the inevitable accident of proximity but because we have chosen to join with someone based on the common ground of shared passions."
Is this your Net, your Web? I don't think so. The ground seems pretty solid where I go, and normal constraints are everywhere.
I'd like to get on Weinberger's Web. The one I can access is increasingly hard-headed and utilitarian, dominated by movie reservatiion sites, customized news delivery, retail ordering, and the ubiquity of digital communications -- mailing lists, e-mail, IM systems. Flamers and spammers have driven many underground, where we communicate in exclusive media more peacefully in peace, but with a less diverse and decidedly non-passionate group of people.
It's too bad, really, but it seems to be the contemporary reality of life online. Small Pieces Loosely Joined is not convincing. The age of the cyber-manifesto is ending. The Web isn't altering the nature of reality. It is, of course, only reflecting.
You can purchase Small Pieces Loosely Joined at Fatbrain. Want to see your own review here? Read the review guidelines first, then use Slashdot's webform.
Not to get too deep into Katz bashing territory, but I seem to remember Jon (like most of us) screaming from the mountain how The Web was going to change everything about our lives not 2 years ago. But now, it seems, that "The Revolution" has met with some resistance, the new trendy thing to do is bash ourselves for being so stupid, and talk about how The Web is not fullfilling our expectations after all.
Yes, the heady days of '99 are long gone, but that doesn't mean The Web can't still change our lives for the better.
- Time. The real world, Weinberger says, is a series of ticks to which schedules are tied. As he investigated different kinds of eBay auctions, checking back every few hours to see if he'd been outbid on quilts, "I felt as if I were returning to a story that was in progress, waiting for me whenever I wanted. I could break off in the middle when, for example, my son came home, and go back whenever I wanted."
The same exact thing goes for books. This isn't revolutionary and new. For hundreds of years people have put down books when their son came home and gone back whenever they wanted.
The web is a medium for people to do what they otherwise would have done anyway through other means.
I think you are missing that cost/benefit analysis that goes along with everything we do. There are many things that I could've done before but would not have because it would have taken too much time (cost) to justify the benefit.
For example, I talk to my sister almost every day via IM. Before we used IM, I never talked to her. Because of IM, my sister and I have a better relationship.
Another example, my girlfriend and I were watching a movie the other night and we started arguing about what other movies a particular actress was in. A quick jump to IMDB and the issue was solved (I was right this time). IMDB has helped my relationship.
Now these are obviously oversimplified examples but they make the point that the internet has changed the world (maybe only slightly) by reducing the cost to do certain tasks making it more likely that they will occur.
With the dot-com implosion and the resulting Internet hangover, my job has been a lot easier the last while. It seems my company has begrudingly come to realize that the Web is just another channel and other set of technologies on which to transact. However, books like Weinberger's tend to fan the flames of Weblust and bolster such executives' deep belief that the Web will, indeed, change the World.
*sigh* I despair. The Web is wonderful. I like the Web. My kids like the Web. My wife likes the Web. It's good at some stuff, it's bad at some stuff. If anything, it's made us more impatient with the World (i.e. I want that information now!!). But in the end, I don't believe it's changed my own context in the world too much. I still play with my kids, chat over the fence with my neighbours, scratch my ass when it's itchy, and wonder what tomorrow will be like.
For the Web pundits who lurch zombie-like towards the wonderfully Webby tomorrow, could their real dilema be that they cannot function in today's world?
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.
The Revolution Will Not Be Webcast
.jpgs of Bill Gates
.NET will change your computing experience.
(with apologies to Gil Scott-Heron)
You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to jack in, log on, and zone out.
You will not be able to download pr0n and warez,
Eat ramen while waiting for a Flash movie to load,
Because the revolution will not be webcast.
The revolution will not be webcast.
The revolution will not be load-balanced by Akamai
Across huge server farms to maintain the proper bandwidth.
The revolution will not bring you
Giving a Powerpoint presentation with Steve
Ballmer, Jeff Raikes, and Craig Mundie to demonstrate
How
The revolution will not be webcast.
The revolution will not be served to you by
Scott McNealy's Sun Microsystems and will not
feature a backend by Larry Ellison's Oracle.
The revolution will not optimize your internet connection.
The revolution will not consolidate all your debts into one easy monthly payment
The revolution will not let you punch the monkey
To win twenty dollars, because
The revolution will not be webcast, brother.
There will be no pictures of Sam Donaldson and Vint Cerf
At the Webby Awards in San Francisco with
Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences members Matt Groening and Beck.
Plastic, Peter Pan, PBS and Plus Magazine
Are not going to win crap.
The revolution will not be webcast.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
WTO Protesters on indymedia.com
There will be no pictures of ICANN board members
Receiving bribes from Network Solutions, Inc.
There will be no Real Video or JPEG stills of John
C. Dvorak muttering conspiracy theories and no articles by
Jon Katz with the bleeding heart that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.
Wired News, Salon.com, and Slashdot.org
will no longer be so damned relevant, and
No one will care what Wil Wheaton has to
Say on his weblog because the geeks
will be in the streets looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be webcast.
There will be no pages of webcams refreshing every
30 seconds with no pictures of half-naked women
Prancing and pimply-faced males scratching themselves.
The theme song will not be posted to MP3.com and
Will not be shared using Napster, Audiogalaxy, Gnutella,
iMesh, BearShare or Kazaa.
The revolution will not be webcast.
The revolution will never return a 404 Not Found,
403 Forbidden, or 500 Internal Server Error.
You will never have to worry about the virus in your
Email, the cracker at your firewall, or the bug in your OS.
The revolution will not waste 2 million dollars on a Superbowl Ad.
The revolution will not find you job opportunities.
The revolution WILL put you in the driver's seat.
The revolution will not be webcast, WILL not be webcast,
WILL NOT BE WEBCAST.
The revolution will not be in cyberspace, brothers;
The revolution will be live.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
"The web is a medium for people to do what they otherwise would have done anyway through other means."
True, but the web (well, actually the Internet in a larger sense, since we're including email already) also allows people to do things they may never have been able to accomplish through other means. Or things they never would have thought to do if not for the possibilities it presents. Would I be hacking my Audrey Internet-appliance into an MP3 jukebox without the support of like-minded individuals on the net? Would such a device or such concept even exist without the web? Nope.
I think what it all comes down to is that the Internet is the most flexible and efficient communications medium ever invented. Effective and instantaneous communication can overcome many difficulties that would otherwise be insurmountable. And the standard of what's considered "effective" has been dramatically raised by the expectations of the user. Fifteen years ago we had flyer sent out in response to one of those little bingo cards tucked inside magazines. Now companies without well written, informative web sites and the internal policies to support such sites are at a serious competitive disadvantage.
So, no, the web hasn't "changed reality". But what ever has? Did cars? Radio? TV? Not really. Nonetheless, I think the kind of enhanced personal communication the web makes possible is the latest example of incremental change that has already had a huge impact.
The two most fundamental impacts the 'net and the web have had on me and my family is communications and access to information.
The first is a no-brainer, I've never been a letter writer (the postal kind) and with our busy schedules, the chances of catching an old friend who lives in the same city, much less the ones scattered across the country, on the phone is vanishly slim. Via e-mail (I know, I know, it ain't the web, but now it is ubiquitous enough that just about everyone I know has e-mail) I am almost daily contact with a bunch of people I haven't seen in years (and a few I've never met face-to-face).
I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to go back to not having the WWW to access almost any kind of information quickly. Flip by a movie and see an actor, but you can't remember his name? Look up the movie in the TV listings, then hit the IMDB to find out. Want to know what's playing at the theater? You don't have to buy a paper or listen to the theater recording (if you can get through). Need to know an obscure fact? Want to find out how to fix your clothes dryer? Looking for a copy of "The Night Before Christmas" to read to your kids on the night before Christmas? Want to look up and purchase an obscure, out of print book? Want to read a three week old article from a foreign newspaper?
These are everyday uses of the net that people already take for granted. News, sex, and retailing doesn't cover it by a long shot. These are fundamental changes in the way we do things and interact with others...
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
It most certainly does not.
What Marxism teaches is that in a capitalst society the upper class controls the means of production... which is a silly observation because "the upper class" is defined as "those who own a lot of stuff", so of course they own the ways and means, that's what makes them upper class.
Marx believed that, in an ideal world, the means of production should be controlled by the workers. This seemingly simple idea has lead to the deaths of tens of millions of people, and the abject poverty of entire nations who should have been filthy rich, had class envy not made Marx's words sound so appealing when coming from the mouths of men like Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro, and Pol Pot.
The trouble with Marx is that he never really proposed a better alternative to capitalsm which could actually be implemented in the real world. All he really knew for sure was that working in a factory sucks. He was a product of the failures of early industrialism more than anything else.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Reaching for the fundamental bases of society, which he believes are economic, Marx defines a class by the relationship they share with the means of production. Therefore, not circular reasoning but definition distinguishes the Bourgeoisie from the Proletariat. This is not really a silly observation, because it uses the word "class" in a different way than you are using it. He never mentions the upper class, and the Bourgeoisie are the capitalists in his examples.
Yes, Marx believed that the proles were alienated because the economy is driven not by natural human need but by the profit motive. I contend that it was not the idea that killed people but the implementation of Communism by Stalin that killed people in Communist Russia. You forgot to mention 1796 France, in which class envy led to the Great Terror. Oh yeah, that was a result of the Enlightenment... sorry.
You're right about the trouble with Marx: I don't get a good feel for an alternative, and perhaps that's what all the Stalinist killing was really about. A regime that maintained its control of the people by brute force, because there was no pot of gold at the end of the Rainbow. But I am not sure that this is proof of the failure of Marxist ideas. See, the fact that, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution capitalists were exploiting workers was a great example of the failure of capitalism. Sweatshops, child labor, and the other excesses of capitalism (see Dickens) at the time were indicators that this system should fail. Why didn't it? Government regulations!
But this is where it should be different! The proles of the world are now in possession of the means of production of information. This should eliminate the boundaries between the classes and end the alienation of the (consumers). But the means of production are kept from the people by law. I'm not saying that's wrong. I'm just saying that's what is.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.