Back in the Day
Way back now in the beginning of the user web, I had a Tripod site, and an Angelfire site. I likewise had a Geocities site. I remember using the Tripod site the most, in the end, because I liked how it worked better than the other two. Of course, since it was the beginning of the web, I can safely say that I didn’t really know what I was doing, and neither did anyone else. And you know what? That made the web experience great.
Before All That
My generation was the last to see the world prior to the internet. My house had a set of 1960’s encyclopedias written during the cold war, and that meant that any book report that did not involve a trip to the library would involve consulting these books which, by 1988, were very outdated. I remember having to do some kind of report on Indira Gandhi, and fortunately, those encyclopedias were still viable for that. They weren’t so useful, however, for all the countries in the USSR which was no longer the USSR.
Encarta
So, when we first were able to afford a home computer and it had Encarta, I soon learned how other kids were able to knock out their reports so fast with clip-art and digitized articles. It was near essential to have some way to get online, or at least on a recent CD or your knowledge pool was severely hampered.
Things Shifted…
Somewhere along the way, maybe the next generation after mine, a group of kids was born with the presence of the internet always being there. Furthermore, they have never known a world without that information at their fingertips. The key realization that they are missing is that all that information is not your information!. In fact, you don’t really know jack diddly. Because you can read a thing on the internet doesn’t make you smarter. It does, however, put a lot of information at your fingertips that before had a high barrier to entry.
But Then…
Because none of us knew what we were doing back in the Tripod/Geocities/Angelfire era, there were many weird and wonderful web pages out there. No one was trying to be an influencer because no one knew what that was. Instead, if you were in to the TV show Family Ties then you made your site about it and other people who were into that might come along and talk with you about things you need to add. There might be a small ecosystem of Family Ties related sites.
But NOW…
But now, there is this sense of there can only be one supreme overlord of Family Ties. First there has to be some kind of flame war, then a bunch of cancellation of people who don’t do Family Ties according to the Contributor Covenant adopted by Family Ties fandom and oh yeah, only the pagerank can support this person who, clearly, knows everything about Family Ties there is to know or ever will be.
Then Wikipedia Made Everyone an Expert
Then the final nail in the coffin is that because an encyclopedia like Wikipedia exists which far outpaces Encarta or my 1960’s encyclopedias. (at least sometimes)There is a whole new generation of self-proclaimed experts on just about any topic you care to pursue. Again, this is a far cry from the early social web, where you were just into a thing because you were. The emails have largely stopped, and instead everyone is jockeying for self-promotion points so that their reputation in the digital world is lifted. And oh, it is unlikely they are gonna code a page. It is more likely they will submit a three minute video clip spouting some shit they read ten minutes ago to try to get the algorithm to pick them up and toss them up the heap.
The Social Web Being Trash Is A Social Problem
In a me-culture, the social web is a social problem. Wisdom and knowledge are not the same things. Knowledge can change with wisdom, but knowledge without wisdom seldom does.