I’ve been reading a lot of gloom and doom posts regarding the internet. I’m not sure what internet these people are on, but it’s not mine. The internet is redefining its purpose in our lives, and this is scaring some people. I think some of these people may be from the old internet – before and during the bubble. That is a little before my time, but during my time on the net, it has still changed a good deal. We have to change with it.
In a post about the results of releasing a book in print and online (for free) at the same time, Chris Kelty writes, “The Internet is dead.” Ok, that’s a bit out of context, but what he does mean is that anything on the internet is not instantly special anymore. Yes, there was a time when something gained a certain amount of prestige and attention for being on the web, but that time has long past. But that doesn’t mean the internet has nothing to offer books. I only read Kelty’s post because it was quoted on a blog about an upcoming book. That gift of exposure is something huge that the internet has to offer us. Things posted online do not automatically garner attention, but they have the potential to. I certainly would have never heard about either book (Siva’s or Kelty’s) without their respective websites. This post (or any blog post for that matter) is a perfect example of that potential: I don’t expect many people to read it, but they could…which actually brings me to my next point.
Read Write Web posted about how the social web is changing things. Except that isn’t how they’re phrasing it – the title of the article is “The Unforeseen Consequences of the Social Web.” They share Kelty’s sentiments that the internet is getting crowded, pointing to the popularity of some social sites. They also talk about privacy issues with the social web. I remember hearing a lot of this when facebook created their news feed. No new information was shared – people had access to exactly the same information as they had before, but it became more visible. The same problem is true of the social web: tweets are inherently public, but the social web makes it so they could gain attention quickly, and often create mirrors of that information elsewhere (that you cannot control).
All of these problems seem to stem from the same thing: what people expect from the web, and what they actually get. In the first case, Kelty was surprised to find that popularity of a work on the internet takes as much effort as popularity in the ‘real world.’ This does not mean the internet has failed him. In the second, people are upset about their lack of privacy on the web. This does not mean the internet is too intrusive. What this does mean is that people need to reevaluate their relationship with the web, and better understand what it is, and what it is not. The web can be a lot of things, but treating it like something it is not will always let you down.