Digital Anthropology: Is Web 2.0 an Idiocracy?

[acidexia]

If you are like me you might come from a generation that was raised online before the boom of social networking sites. The Internet was once a secret room that only the freaks could experience. We were trolling before it was called trolling and we didn't do it for mob sport but intellectual exercise. My first exposure to the Internet was through a

Comments

[poisonedgrace]

I think Gibson predicted almost everything on the internet :D

I was just having this same "how I remember the internet" discussion with a co-worker on Monday.

I sort of miss the old days :(

[misskittyt]

I heard on NPR that our privacy on the web is pretty much being used as currency now.

[labrynthos]

I don't mind the new internets. I get to design cool sites for it.

However, I truly dislike the amount of low-quality discussion and writing that abounds. Posted comments used to be interesting. Now it's just crazy-talk, spammers, and poorly executed trolling.

I do miss good quality forum flaming though...

Meme-ories

[windlestraw]

remember my commodore 64 and my tandy comps. The cassette data drive that took forever. In math class in 6th grade we were given assignment to program with BASIC language and I patterned mine after the choose your own adventure books and wrote my own content and coded it like books with if then goto statements. Eventually, after looking at my code, the rest of the classes and thinking she decided I had plagiarized the code so I told her I would re-write again in front of her only new and different story and started to but she got lost or confused and I think embarrassed and continued with plagiarism accusations and eventually having parents called.

I remember the day Pong hit our local pizza parlour and how we gathered around, marveled and felt lucky to be alive in such times.

[windlestraw]

And Snow Crash I think hit it better on head of nail. Loglow, corporate enclaves, virtuality, hacking crime syndicates, etc. Neal Stephenson did good job on book.