From my vantage point, I think the internet is one of the most fascinating things around. And from a productivity standpoint, it's obviously true that it holds some value. That's sort of trivially true. But it's kind of like looking at a piece of art and declaring that it's useful “because it attracts people to the art gallery so you have a bunch of people in one place to stand around and socialize and drink”. Though that seems like a noble thing in itself.
But the actual power of the thing, what you can do with it, the virtual life you build (which I think is a lost art, the early net was full of small spaces where people got very close on a social level; small communities have their charm) and the topics of exploration is all very exciting. It both piggy backs off of the existing world – when one researches a topic like a volcano erupting or the politics of Russia, those are things in the real world external to the net – and creates worlds of its own as people map out their own existence.
It's unprecedented in the way we have access to information, surely, but it's also unprecedented in terms of expression. And in terms of private identity (which can be an issue with social media, more on that in future posts). And really, in terms of shaping the world. We remember how the Arab Spring owed a lot of its successes due to the existence of the net.
So we have a dynamic, powerful tool, space, etc, that is worth exploring and defending the principles of.
This all makes me... depressed is the wrong word (though that's becoming frequent), but it's quite startling to juxtapose what is possible with the internet to what actually passes for mainstream use.
To be less subtle, in a wider sense, I think culture is somewhat being destroyed.
It's a sort of universal principle and doesn't apply solely to the internet. A society may be more intelligent if its culture is participatory and engaging. And critically, does not attempt to coerce. I understand the value of commerce, but I don't think you can infinitely squeeze blood out of a stone and try to make true what isn't. Over time, things seem degraded, unless you keep your ear to the ground and sense the cultural vibrations: where is everyone going, are they happy here now, if they are not then what happened and is the situation likely to improve?
Momentum is the great killer of this type of flexibility. It takes time to stop, evaluate, and then (potentially) shift. Particularly if it means you'll lose what you've gotten to this point, if you've decided on a certain direction.
Moving on, the question of taste is an interesting one. Because it begs the question of intuition. There are said to be good cultural forms and bad cultural forms, or rather good and bad cultural products. Music is subjective. Or is it? Is a good song subjectively just the random assortment of neurons in the listener's mind? Or is there something bigger?
Here's my theory, to answer my own rhetorical questions. I think people are basically drawn to the same things. I think we're all similar. I don't know why that's true, but it is. There's some music I'm not a huge fan of, but that's a minor variation. But it goes beyond simple taste.
I would say, specifically, that good cultural forms are ones which are honest. A little effort put into the process, but not too much. To the extent that creativity pours out, and then not covering it up with ridiculous restrictions like having to pay the piper of commerciality. Again, you can't squeeze blood out of a stone.
How does intuition and basic creativity without too much unnecessary effort (which leads to the degradation of culture) play out? Well, to list just a few specific examples...
Television is a big one. A hammer blow – symbolically – against what proper culture should be is the idea that the History Channel should run shows like Ancient Aliens which of course has nothing to do with history. You know why they do it: to make money. And as with all examples in making money, yes I do think people should be able to put food on the table (though I think more companies and employees should stand up for their principles strongly) but this is clearly wrong. And it's wrong – beyond the obvious – for the reasons all the other examples of forcing monetization is wrong, that it takes the normal flow of ideas or culture and creates a very specific, forceful definition of what it should be, propped up by an institution. In other words just that I think information itself is basically freely available, but that the executive decisions to create a freeze dried, ready-for-consumption product is a way of forcing the issue to the degradation of culture.
On the subject of TV, good interviews barely exist now. The Dick Cavett show was a wonderful show. The people who he had on the show – artists, who dropped their facade and showed the humanity underneath; more on that in future posts – had the chance to actually speak, uninterrupted, and take their time. It's a far cry from the 8 minute segments of today followed by 9 commercial breaks. And so, culture declines. We don't have proper cultural products like that to rely on, which is to say, simply done, no overcompensation.
I've described one domain. You can probably think of numerous other examples in other domains.
The internet is of course another one. When we log on to Facebook or Twitter (you shouldn't), do we get a clean page, one that encourages exploration? You do not. And much of the internet is also going in that direction. “But that's just subjective taste!” in fact, it isn't. It “feels” ugly. I think 90% (minimum) of the population would agree. The other 10% is reserved for the marketers (Bill Hicks may have been exaggerating when he said to the marketers in the audience at his standup show to kill themselves, but in trying to make a point, he wasn't that far off in expressing frustration) and people who think it's okay for things to be as ugly as possible as long as they make money.
This all goes back to what I said at the start about the internet being fascinating and a place to explore. There needs to be more of that, not less. I don't want to talk about the Facebooks of the world because it deserves its own post but I will just say for now that it does absolutely fit into the category of “destroying culture”.
But in general, all these things I could list are in the same category. You start with something simple, it works, it's fine, if it ain't broke don't fix it, and then they think (what made them popular in the first place, by the way...) it's not enough, do more things to it. And then they go against their intuitions and ruin it.
So we live in an ugly world where websites that rhyme with acebook and witter employ psychological warfare to steal as much attention from you as possible (a precious resource, I might add), television is marketed to the lowest common denominator, radio is the same, grocery stores have copies of Gossip Magazine rather than the classics of literature. The world doesn't feel like “ours” any more. It doesn't feel organic, you feel like you can't explore it as well as, say, the early days of the internet, when things really were done according to principles of freedom and unfettered inquiry.
We can take it back, but it requires an understanding of what the problems are, and unfortunately it's difficult to focus on every news cycle to see whether certain corporations really care or if their PR departments just repeat the same bullshit as every other corporation who does something unethical but claims to have the interests of the public at heart. If we don't, we'll never reach our potential. Reject culturally abusive things. But how to get there? It feels tiring to fight the world all the time.
Listening to intuition is a good first step.