Orange Orange (Jue's Blog)

The fact that this realization still strikes me profound after a few days can only indicate 2 things: 1) that I think too much about the internet, and 2) that my thoughts about the internet are at least 2 years behind everyone else’s. But since we’re on the subject, I might as well share some writings I’ve found by those who don’t suffer from my propensity for lagging behind the times.

Tim O’Reilly, head of O’Reilly Media and one of the most influential figures on the development of the web in the last decade, has the following to say about a certain “collective intelligence” taking hold on the internet:

If an essential part of Web 2.0 is harnessing collective intelligence, turning the web into a kind of global brain, the blogosphere is the equivalent of constant mental chatter in the forebrain, the voice we hear in all of our heads. It may not reflect the deep structure of the brain, which is often unconscious, but is instead the equivalent of conscious thought. And as a reflection of conscious thought and attention, the blogosphere has begun to have a powerful effect.

First, because search engines use link structure to help predict useful pages, bloggers, as the most prolific and timely linkers, have a disproportionate role in shaping search engine results. Second, because the blogging community is so highly self-referential, bloggers paying attention to other bloggers magnifies their visibility and power. The “echo chamber” that critics decry is also an amplifier (Link to article here).

“Web 2.0″ is the buzzword for what I’ve been trying to place my finger on for the last month–that snazzy, interactive, smooth dynamic feeling of the web as exemplified by sites like flickr, wikipedia, and pretty much everything google has ever made (gmail and google maps being the most well-known ones). Apparently there’s been a conference every year since 2004 to explore how this “new Web” can be made even cooler.

While strictly speaking, Web 2.0 refers to a set of technical innovations and business models, these components are deeply connected with a paradigm of collectivist, highly self-referential content that must also enter into discussion. The essence of the web, the hyperlink (a word or image you click to get to another site), has seen its power amplify exponentially through innovations such as Google’s PageRank algorithm, meta-aggregator sites, RSS feeds and trackback links. (There is a nice discussion of what these things are in the article I linked to above, but in short, these are all ways of assigning value to online content based on how frequently that content is mentioned by other people — a set up that unsurprisingly leads to the sort of self-referential culture that characterizes the web.) The prominence of blogs and the nature of the blogosphere is very intertwined with this culture of meta, and all of this is rapidly entering the mainstream.

Once we start looking at how online culture (and the technologies and core paradigms that give rise to it) intersects or affects culture at large, or at least in web-oriented societies like the US and Japan, some interesting things start happening. For someone like Jaron Lanier, blind online collectivism is a scary fad that might be here to stay:

The hive mind is for the most part stupid and boring. Why pay attention to it?

The problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it’s been elevated to such importance so quickly. And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force. This is different from representative democracy, or meritocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods. The fact that it’s now being re-introduced today by prominent technologists and futurists, people who in many cases I know and like, doesn’t make it any less dangerous (“Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism”).

In particular, he points out the dangers of replacing a culture of individual creation with a culture founded on nothing but aggregate, contextual content. On the other hand, I personally think that the self-referential has become a new mode of creation in itself. You really can’t replicate in any other way the magical combination of bemused disbelief and hilarity you get when your friend sends you a link to a new internet meme (Chuck Norris facts anyone?). On the other hand, the humor of the meta gives way to a certain postmodern nausée when you start uncovering the layers and circles of meaning that, shockingly, don’t go anywhere at all. (Except to online bulletin boards like 4chan, which are only comprehensible to sexually frustrated 14-year-olds and fake degree-holders in cultural studies.) If Classicism was the pursuit of an aesthetic ideal “out there” and Romanticism the pursuit of the transcendent “in here,” then Internetism is about no ideal anywhere, but rather the unique pleasure of making our thoughts chase their tails. This seems to be what Lanier’s critics would point out, although they correctly add that this is a question of culture that far pre-dates the internet era.

While it may be true that a large number of current websites and group projects contain more content aggregation (links) than original works (stuff), that may as well be a critique of the entirety of Western culture since post-modernism. I’m as tired as anyone of art and thought that exists entirely in the realm of context and reference — but you can’t blame Wikipedia for architecture based on winks to earlier eras or a music culture obsessed with sampling old recordings instead of playing new compositions.

Honestly, the loudest outcry over our Internet culture’s inclination towards re-framing and the “meta” tend to come from those with the most to lose in a society where “credit” is no longer a paramount concern. Most of us who work in or around science and technology understand that our greatest achievements are not personal accomplishments but lucky articulations of collective realizations (Douglas Rushkoff, “Responses to ‘Digital Maoism’”).

This last point brings my thoughts back full circle, as I had intended to start this post with a few observations about blogging culture, which got me started on the websurfing spree that yielded all the links in this post. Basically, I question if the idea of original insight, the goal of traditional writing and the basis on which writers are judged and compensated by society, has made it to the online world completely intact. I was surfing through posts like this in an attempt to uncover the secret to becoming a widely read, celebrated blogger, but it seems that the tips have less to do with producing meaningful content than with creating “viral content” or “link-bait,” essentially writing that induce readers to spread your link by word of mouth (or as the case may be, word-of-keyboard). While I’m sure that the ideals of good, informative writing must still play a big part in what constitutes a “linkable” piece, I guess it’s no surprise that popularity based on incoming links isn’t fundamentally different from any other kind of popularity. So, with that in mind, look out for my next post on the “Top Ten Ways to Get into the Top Ten Blogs that Talk about How to Make Top Ten Lists About Blogging.” SURE to go viral.

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