(Untitled)

[quinara]

People of the internet, oh, this makes me sad.

The Web We Have to Save

An Iranian blogger after six years in prison talks about the internet he remembers and the internet he's found on coming out.

But the Stream, mobile applications, and moving images: They all show a departure from a books-internet toward a television-internet. We seem to have

Comments

[bogwitch]

Agreed, but TV and passive consumption is the way to draw in the masses.

I think this war was lost as soon as big business got online, but Facebook and the rest nailed in the coffin. I think I have further thoughts on this, but I need to think about them more and Tegan wants me to go to bed.

[quinara]

Yes, that's a good point. I think the big question here is whether culture as a whole was any better when the internet was a niche way for randomers to connect through blogs, or whether this is only a decline (if we say it's a decline) in the internet as a medium. Which I suppose might be hopeful. We just need another quasi-egalitarian global communication network...

[rahirah]

I do, she says, chiseling her words into the stone keyboard.

I must say, though, people have been decrying the decline of X ever since there was an X. O tempora, o mores!

[quinara]

I sort of do for the most part (half the time my actual problem is not writing as if I'm at work and writing instead how I speak, which is not with random insteads stuck in the middle of the sentence)... But it's the curse of Twitter, I find. You get so frustrated not being able to finish your sentence the way you want to you cut the punctuation, then the spaces, then you abbreviate things and then you just think 'fuck it'. I used to spend a lot more time putting in italics and hyperlinks as well, but there are so many platforms now where you just can't, so I'm long out of the habit

[rbfvid]

Yes, internet changes. Which is great.
And I don't know where that guy took "linear, passive, programmed and inward-looking". Your internet is as linear and passive as you allow it to be. Nothing limits you to the newsfeed of the particular site or blog. If you want variety - just go and pick it, for the christssake... The only thing that makes YOUR internet programmed and passive is your own brain.

[quinara]

I think his point is less about any one individual's experience and more about the internet as a bigger system/network. Yes, anyone can carve out an open-ended experience curated by no one but them, but it is ever less the normal way of experiencing the internet, which changes the way we use the internet to communicate, which changes the way we relate to one another through the internet on a systemic level.

[rbfvid]

Yeah, I get what you mean (and what that Iranian blogger probably meant, too). But I can't help to perceive it as something like "Once I was on the Internets and saw a kitty pic, and now all I do in my life is look at the kitty pics! Evil, evil Internets!"

Did internet content change in the past 20 years? Sure. Technologies evolved, audience expanded.
Wall of text isn't the only way to convey a thought anymore. And not always the best way to convey it. For instance, one of the most effective Angel & Spike meta I've seen consists of couple of images and short quote: http://marilynmay.tumblr.com/post/77584123495

And I know, a lot of the people aren't interested in conveying any thought. Which doesn't mean that they should be banned from internet communication.

The thing is - THAT part of internet communication comes directly from everyday communication. It's not about saying something meaningful. It's just "Hello, I exist!" "Oh, hi, I see that you exist!

[thismaz]

Interesting article. Thanks for the link. But while I think he is right about a number of things, I think a large part of his complaint is a manifestation of culture shock. He has been gone (which is bad and sad) the world has changed and it is not what he was familiar with.

[quinara]

I'm sure that is partly the case, and probably explains the slightly backwards-looking framing where we have to save what is long gone... But I don't think it affects the wider criticism of how the internet has become as a whole, which I think is worth complaining about. If only as a spur towards thinking about new ways of building these networks again.

[kazzy_cee]

I miss proper grammar and spelling. Even well know news sites don't seem to proof read and write in really poor English :(

There - now I'm adding a sad face from perfectly good punctuation.

[quinara]

I do feel that the pace of news has got ridiculous, which I think is the cause of a lot of these typos and things. The BBC annoys the hell out of me that every new time I visit it and click on a news article I get a pop-up telling me about breaking news that takes up half the page. It's like they realised people wanted stuff that was up-to-date, set everything up to deal with that - and then ran with it to the point we all get "news" shoved down our throat two articles at a time when we only wanted one. Which does feel very much like TV news with its scrolling bar of breaking news at the bottom.

Sad faces are classic, though; you can't be sad about sad faces.

[bogwitch]

Ugh that Breaking News pop up is annoying. It's fine if there is exciting News like disasters and stuff but I don't care if some bloke has left a bank and I don't want it interrupting my reading articles about postboxes.

[curiouswombat]

I don't get the breaking news pop-up. I wonder what I did to avoid it?