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Internet was supposed to give everybody a voice and the chance to be heard, a wider open door to whatever information they wanted, it was the global village dre

by mnl 8y ago

Internet was supposed to give everybody a voice and the chance to be heard, a wider open door to whatever information they wanted, it was the global village dream, the digital land of freedom and opportunity. Ha! we were too naïve, it has just given societies the means to be more dysfunctional than they possibly could with non-interactive media. Information is just money, it doesn't need to be true to have a definite value. Your personal information is money, where you are, who you are, what you're browsing is money. Politics don't matter any more, because they can be fixed by retconning and you won't notice, you won't care, because what matters is the constant flow of shiny glimpses of happiness you could get some day or you simply wish you had any chance to get close to, all at your fingertips waiting for your input. All these interactive ephemera are provided by some corporation in exchange for your consumer profile. And if you feel that there's not much freedom nor much opportunity after all, well there's room at the conspiracists alley for you, you're more than welcome.

agumonkey 8y ago
The naive information highway still holds but ... 0.1% maybe :) Somehow it reminds me of noise versus signal. Having "more" doesn't mean having more of what you want, on the contrary. It's an usual system design actually. Reminds of the notion of price. Price is more than cost of parts and labor. You give a perfect item for free and nobody will take it. There's a relativity to effort. You value what you pay for. And it's bidirectional; people put price at what they value the sale. Then balance occur. Same goes for communication it seems. You give wikipedia and lolcats for free.. but lot more people don't value knowledge [1] but laughter is always good. Climate allows for this kind of growth. At the same time, when people have insight and ambition, they'd gladly pay 1000$ for "guaranteed and efficient" lessons because they plan to turn it into 4000$ monthly, so free DIY knowledge is also not really a necessity. Not that I dislike it. I despise information lockdown and like to explain things for free. But there's a tension needed for people to learn and change their mindset (learning is not very easy). About the journalistic side of information you described, it's all sadly true. We also had a sad lesson with the web. Stored and vetted knowledge means zero in a mob context. Tribal reflexes will win. How crazy is that. [1] social paradox, society is ignorance and specialization, so knowing more than what gives you your place in society is somehow waste.

by mnl 8y ago

agumonkey 8y ago

The naive information highway still holds but ... 0.1% maybe :) Somehow it reminds me of noise versus signal. Having "more" doesn't mean having more of what you want, on the contrary. It's an usual system design actually. Reminds of the notion of price. Price is more than cost of parts and labor. You give a perfect item for free and nobody will take it. There's a relativity to effort. You value what you pay for. And it's bidirectional; people put price at what they value the sale. Then balance occur. Same goes for communication it seems. You give wikipedia and lolcats for free.. but lot more people don't value knowledge [1] but laughter is always good. Climate allows for this kind of growth. At the same time, when people have insight and ambition, they'd gladly pay 1000$ for "guaranteed and efficient" lessons because they plan to turn it into 4000$ monthly, so free DIY knowledge is also not really a necessity. Not that I dislike it. I despise information lockdown and like to explain things for free. But there's a tension needed for people to learn and change their mindset (learning is not very easy). About the journalistic side of information you described, it's all sadly true. We also had a sad lesson with the web. Stored and vetted knowledge means zero in a mob context. Tribal reflexes will win. How crazy is that. [1] social paradox, society is ignorance and specialization, so knowing more than what gives you your place in society is somehow waste.