By K. A. Laity
Has Web 2.0 failed?
It's supposed to be the break-through moment, when the web frees us of our chains and allows children to hold hands across the world and sing songs—at least virtually.
More people are online than ever: Facebook is the single biggest time suck out there for people with computers and more sign up for Twitter every day. You can sit down to your keyboard and have the world at your fingertips.
But not everyone thinks this is working out for the best. The Guardian interviewed web guru Jaron Lanier this week, who was talking about his new manifesto, You are Not a Gadget. This self-described digital optimist was one of the earliest promoters of the possibilities of the web, but now he finds it mired in a kind of "digital Maoism" that flattens the efforts of the truly inspired into monotonous product and noise.
"The web gave us the first empirical evidence that vast numbers of people really are creative, really do have things to offer, and really will do it… The stuff I don't like is web 2.0. It regiments and anonymises people. I think that's a huge wrong turn."
Lanier's concerns have to do with the pack mentality behaviour that most of us have seen at one time or another on the web: joining little groups to preach to the converted, turning like snarling dogs on anyone who strays too far out of line and attacking "enemy" sites whether blogs, Facebook pages or Twitter streams. There are roving gangs of mean girls who assault the romance blogs and herds of middle school students who gather like jackals to conjure the pack from the bones of the weakest link.
But Lanier doesn't just see failure in the howl of the pack, but in the attempts of programmers to make people act more like the computer systems they design, "because it allows us to pretend that the machine is becoming intelligent and doing work." Instead we're lowering our expectations, fitting our nimble minds into regimented categories, giving expected answers and refusing to acknowledge the wild possibilities beyond choices that can be defined as "if input = A" type interactions.
So our great strides forward might realy be more like hesitant sidesteps. We thought technology was going to break open the shackles of oppression, but as Rebecca Thompson argued this week, the oppressors have the technology, too, and increasingly they're using it to silence those voices of dissent.
Sure, the plight of those who suffer the worst crimes has the chance of circling the globe in seconds, but what if everyone's too busy playing Farmville to notice? Is Web 2.0 just the latest version of soma, distracting us from the immense potential that the world wide web has to offer? It's not just the inclination toward Facebook philanthropy, that willingness to help causes your friends join on the social network as long as the commitment doesn't go beyond clicking links.
It's the blandness and passive inattention that keeps people at the level of that first click, a lack of interest in pursuing anything in depth. A recent link posted by the Human Rights Campaign on Facebook read, "Supreme Court Turns Down Lesbian Parental Rights Case Brought By Anti-Equality Forces." Immediately there were several comments disparaging the blindness of the courts, saying what a shame it was to see such blinkered thinking still ruling the day. Clearly none of them had even clicked on the link to read the story, which was in fact positive, a triumph for parental equality—a fact the headline of the link made plain.
The web makes it possible for people around the world to communicate in real time on real issues, to make strides forward in the work of peace, creativity, social justice and sustainable growth. But I think most people would prefer to build another virtual chicken coop. I wouldn't go as far as Harry Lime, but maybe all those clicks are getting us used to behaving like clockwork.
Image via Vator News