The first time someone showed me internet it was in 1994. I didn't really understand what the big deal was. It was a personality test of the Jungian type. Before I had already had an Atari, an MSX and an Amiga. PC's at that time were terrible. Almost no graphics or sound and the only applications were word processing and spreadsheets. A friend of mine had an Amiga with a connection to messageboards via a modem. I didn't have any idea of the use of it.
So in 1994 my first internet experience. Well finding out I was an INTP according to Jungian typology wasn't very interesting. So what was the use of that? About five years later in 1999 I worked for a publisher where they had a T3! connection. So I was surfing a large part of the day. By then the internet had grown a lot. I had just finished American Studies and I wanted to return to the US where I had lived as a child.
And I thought: "Hey maybe I can do a house exchange with someone in San Francisco!" And so it happened. In a few years time I exchanged with other people in places like Denmark, London and Germany. I used the internet to buy stuff and I met my wife through a website.
But none of this is really new. The only thing internet does is bring us together faster. All the new gadgets don't really mean that much. It's still about communicating.
And a lot of communication is fluff. All the Hyves, MySpaces, Facebooks are not very different from their predecessor Geocities. There people made their own homepages which had interesting information on their cat. There's nothing wrong with that. It can be very informative for their close relations. In a certain manner Andrew Keen is right, even though I do not agree with his criticism that the web makes the amateur an expert.
But it is good that everyone can be their own publisher even though they publish crap. Another point is that a lot of the "social media" people think that this new media will usher in new freedom. I think that's hopelessly naive. In the end it will be a continuance of the endless power struggle there has always been. Critics of this idea who have experience with IT in the enterprise rightfully point out that enterprise software is chosen for a whole set of reasons. Although I still think that enterprise vendors overprice and underdeliver. Therefore social media in the Enterprise is going to take some time.
I believe very much in the opportunities these new media bring. But it is still very much a toy of the elite. the Internet is an elite operation. Most of the population of the world has never even made a phone call, you know, so that's certainly not on the Internet. For people who already belong to the rich part of the world.
The most interesting for me then thoughtwise is how to use technology to improve the lives of the 80% of the people living in poverty. They don't need iPhones. They need a simple mobile phone that can be handpowered and goes on forever with one battery fill. This way they can use information affordably.
Also I find ways of reperesentation of information like Silobreaker much more interesting. Also the wisdom of crowds is interesting, but how trustworthy are they when they can be influenced by secretive activists. I quoted a lot by Wikipedia, but they can be influenced by these propagandists. And these can be activists or corporations.
The web is also a place of propaganda and politics. How do you know the information you have is trustworthy. Some people say the old media are more trustworthy because of journalistic ethics and practices. I find this laughable. Even the best newspapers are not printed for distributing news. They are made to sell advertising to a public. So how trustworthy can the articles on cars be if that is one of the most important advertising groups. An opinionated blogger is then more trustworthy.
These are just some random thoughts on the whole internet, social media phenomenon. For me it is clear that even though on the surface things change at the same time they stay familiarly the same. Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 once again old wine in new bags. It is all information and part of society. It takes along all the problems we had previously and reframes them.
So in 1994 my first internet experience. Well finding out I was an INTP according to Jungian typology wasn't very interesting. So what was the use of that? About five years later in 1999 I worked for a publisher where they had a T3! connection. So I was surfing a large part of the day. By then the internet had grown a lot. I had just finished American Studies and I wanted to return to the US where I had lived as a child.
And I thought: "Hey maybe I can do a house exchange with someone in San Francisco!" And so it happened. In a few years time I exchanged with other people in places like Denmark, London and Germany. I used the internet to buy stuff and I met my wife through a website.
But none of this is really new. The only thing internet does is bring us together faster. All the new gadgets don't really mean that much. It's still about communicating.
And a lot of communication is fluff. All the Hyves, MySpaces, Facebooks are not very different from their predecessor Geocities. There people made their own homepages which had interesting information on their cat. There's nothing wrong with that. It can be very informative for their close relations. In a certain manner Andrew Keen is right, even though I do not agree with his criticism that the web makes the amateur an expert.
But it is good that everyone can be their own publisher even though they publish crap. Another point is that a lot of the "social media" people think that this new media will usher in new freedom. I think that's hopelessly naive. In the end it will be a continuance of the endless power struggle there has always been. Critics of this idea who have experience with IT in the enterprise rightfully point out that enterprise software is chosen for a whole set of reasons. Although I still think that enterprise vendors overprice and underdeliver. Therefore social media in the Enterprise is going to take some time.
I believe very much in the opportunities these new media bring. But it is still very much a toy of the elite. the Internet is an elite operation. Most of the population of the world has never even made a phone call, you know, so that's certainly not on the Internet. For people who already belong to the rich part of the world.
The most interesting for me then thoughtwise is how to use technology to improve the lives of the 80% of the people living in poverty. They don't need iPhones. They need a simple mobile phone that can be handpowered and goes on forever with one battery fill. This way they can use information affordably.
Also I find ways of reperesentation of information like Silobreaker much more interesting. Also the wisdom of crowds is interesting, but how trustworthy are they when they can be influenced by secretive activists. I quoted a lot by Wikipedia, but they can be influenced by these propagandists. And these can be activists or corporations.
The web is also a place of propaganda and politics. How do you know the information you have is trustworthy. Some people say the old media are more trustworthy because of journalistic ethics and practices. I find this laughable. Even the best newspapers are not printed for distributing news. They are made to sell advertising to a public. So how trustworthy can the articles on cars be if that is one of the most important advertising groups. An opinionated blogger is then more trustworthy.
These are just some random thoughts on the whole internet, social media phenomenon. For me it is clear that even though on the surface things change at the same time they stay familiarly the same. Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 once again old wine in new bags. It is all information and part of society. It takes along all the problems we had previously and reframes them.
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