Web2 – Web Induced Dementia

So often in the world of New Media things that are proclaimed as a great advance are in fact a regression from what we had before. Search Engine technology is a case in point. If somebody in a low tech (pens and paper) office had reorganised the filing system by taking all the alphabetically or numerically arranged, cross referenced files from their neatly labelled drawers and shelves, extracted all the papers, given them a good shuffling and piled them on the floor before announcing, “I have created a new way of indexing information,” they would have been sacked or worse.

Yet is that not what Internet Search Engines do? These systems do not actually index information, they lump it all together on networked devices and rely on the speed with which computers can search vast amounts of data to pick out records containing specified keywords or numbers.

This is fine in an organisations database as all data is given equal priority but in the case of a public search engine, people and organisations can manipulate the search process to ensure that searchers see not the most relevant nor the most popular pieces of information but that which has been placed at the top of search listings because people have paid money to put it there. Search Engines using Google technology or those whose search technique is based on the Google method do not bring you what you asked for but what will earn the operating company most revenue.

This is the great step backwards that happened when Google rose to dominance on the World Wide Web. it can be argued that the public library is no different. The newest and most borrowed books will be displayed on shelves while the unpopular or obscure volumes will be relegated to an archive so that only people asking for them specifically will ever see them.

But the web heads, never known for discernment, loved Google for its randomness. You never knew what it might throw up (!) in answer to a search query. These were the generation brought up on Forrest Gump’s idiotic statement “My mom said life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.” As well as being known for a lack of judgement, web heads are also known for their short attention span which is probably why the could swallow Gump’s non sequitur without remembering that inside the lid of a box of chocolates you get a set of pictures telling you what fillings each one has.

Or maybe I am the one who is out of step here, being so discerning as to only treat my wife, daughter and Dear Old Mum to luxury brands. Maybe, but I doubt it.

Riding on the Googleisation bandwagon came Web 2, not a new generation of software, not a formalised way of designing web pages, but a free for all, a notion that confused the creation of chaos with progress.

Web 2 used old and clunky technology to open up the possibility of posting every thought, every action, prurient fantasy and lurid details of every belch, fart and burst zit to the global community so we could all share.

Prior to the popularisation of Web 2 it was possible with a bit of effort to find good stuff, useful and entertaining content on almost any topic. Now it is difficult to find anything but dross, thousands of opportunities to buy stuff we never wanted and are never going to want, the daily jottings of millions of Billy – No – Mates bloggers whose lives, if their blogs are to be believed, are filled with such banality it is easy to understand why they dwell in the Billy – No – Mates corner of society and lots of pages posted by people who just want to yell at anybody who does not agree with their warped vision of the Satanic dystopia we live in.

More disturbing than an hour spent ploughing through this dross though, is an hour spent reading the arse dribble posted by self styled “New Media pundits”, some of whom should really know better. Jeff Jarvis lectures in journalism at one of America’s leading universities, he is a fine writer and (usually) an intelligent observer of events.

Sadly Jeff seems to have developed the kind of web dementia my title refers to. Just recently in a column published in the UK newspaper The Guardian Jeff, extolling the virtues of Web 2 and social networking declared that the internet is not a medium but a place, a place where we can meet, interact, do business, make new friends and much more. My reaction as someone who worked in Information Technology for over twenty years was “this guy needs to get out more.”

Maybe it is understandable that the rise of Web 2 has coincided with a resurgence in fundamentalist religion, after all both seem to demand a literal belief in myths. In the case of religion it is the ancient myths of semi – literate goat botherers, in the case of Web 2 it is the myths of nerds, geeks and wankers. The net is not, as Jeff Jarvis would have it, a place. Places are real geographical locations, Copocabana Beach is as place, as are Times Square, New York; Piccadilly Circus, London; Place de Concorde, Paris; The Vatican City, Rome and the Green Zone in Baghdad. Real, physical places, real buildings where you can meet real people and drink real coffee while you chat by making noises with your mouth. Second Life is not a place, nor is MySpace or Facebook. These exist in a virtual world, you have no way of knowing if the people you interact with are real or not. In the virtual world people can change genders, travel backwards and forwards in time and occupy several identities simultaneously. They may even have conversations with themselves. In the virtual world friends, property, sexual encounters and pets are not real. And the coffee is not real either, although if the real place you happen to be in is London, virtual coffee is probably an improvement.

They myths religions and Web 2 promoters use to ensnare people in their worlds of unreality are remarkably similar in that they are based on a belief in artificial intelligence. The artificial intelligence of religion is God or Allah or something else. This creature who can never be understood by humans is the creator of all things, the source of all wisdom, it rewards our virtues and punishes our wrongdoing, it makes the crops grow and causes they young to be born and also sends hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, floods and eruptions to destroy civilisations and slaughter millions.

In the worlds of Web 2 the roles of friend, mentor, judge and executioner are filled by software modules although these may be given humanoid names to strengthen the delusion.

Just as fantastical id the Artificial Intelligence computers are supposed to develop when enough of them are linked together. Its is this that powers the virtual world of Web 2.

Computers and Gods are both created by humans to fulfil a need of course. There is a difference of time though, computers are only capable of doing what they are pre-programmed to do. Gods we find, are credited with doing all that we cannot logically explain.

Religion is a kind of dementia in which people are persuaded to abandon rational enquiry and take as truth the insane ramblings of ancient but not as ancient as religionists would have us believe, scriptures. Maybe computers are the Gods of the future.

If the virtual worlds of Web 2 with its virtual places, virtual people, virtual sex and virtual coffee are encouraging fanatics to retreat into existing in unreality then it can truly be said that Web 2 is inducing dementia.