L. M. Lloyd

Much has been said lately about the 'dangers' of social media. Most of this criticism focuses on the isolation of a society constantly staring at phones and laptops, rather than engaging each other in face to face interactions. While I do agree their are inarguable deleterious consequences sprouting from social media, I do not find isolation to be a convincing argument. Long before people were isolating themselves behind their phone or laptop, they were instead hiding behind their Walkmans and portable TVs. Before that, it was their books and magazines. There is nothing new about hiding behind a wall of content consumption. What is new, is the impression that the content you are consuming is itself a connection to other people. Previously, you could wall yourself away behind your newspaper, but it left you feeling no less starved for human interaction. One was always forced to choose between isolation, or interaction. No, the 'danger' of social media is not in isolation, but rather in how it alters how we interact. 

The thing about human interaction, at least in the traditional sense, is that it is inherently unpredictable. No matter what your intention, you cannot control how another person will react, and in a genuine social situation, you have no choice but to witness and deal with that reaction. You might call up a friend to tell them about your new promotion, or go into your favorite café to show off your new girlfriend, but you never know how that will be received. It might be as minor as a disapproving look, or as severe as an embarrassing confrontation, but there is always the risk that something you say or do could elicit unwanted criticism of even derision. In this way, every human interaction teaches us the importance of diplomacy, how far a modicum of humility and tact can go. The more we converse with others, the more we pull out of ourselves, and realize the importance of taking other points of view into consideration. The more conversations you have, the more you interact, the broader and less self-involved your perspective necessarily becomes.

One of the more striking things about the distopian urban sprawl called simply The City in Warren Elllis' wonderful work Transmetropolitan, is how people have become so obsessed with the now, that they have lost all sense of history, to the point that they don't even know what year it is anymore. When I first read about The City a decade ago, it seemed like an unnecessarily dramatic flourish that no one knew what year it was. Today, the real world often makes me feel like Transmetropolitian is an amazingly optimistic feel-good story. A prime example of this is the what is going on right now in Iran, or more specifically how what is going on in Iran is being covered. All over the web, and even in traditional media venues, everyone is repeating over and over again the, honestly schmaltzy, catchphrase the revolution will not be televised — it will be twittered. In these articles, invariably citizen journalism, and by proxy twitter, are credited with completely changing how we relate to the events, and offering something revolutionary and new to our culture. Some, even go as far as to use this as proof that the social network is actually the reason for the existence of sentient life. No seriously, I only wish I was kidding. Plenty of stories actually mention twitter more often than they mention the people in Iran.

Problem is, this storyline goes back to before most of the people telling this story were probably born. I'm sure there are probably stories back before I can remember about ham radio operators, and then CB radio operators, but the first time I remember this particular "citizen journalists use new technology to circumvent traditional media and get out a story of revolution to the rest of the world," was back during the Tiananmen Square massacre and not to long after that with the fall of the Soviet Union. Back then, the disruptive technology was the fax machine and the computer BBS. Later, with the WTO riots in Seattle, the same exact stories would be written about the blog. In just about every notable international event in the past 20 years, there has been someone, if not groups of people, earnestly writing about how technology is "for the first time" changing how we report on international events. See, thing is, you can't be amazed at this 'new development' every single time for two decades. After a while, it really isn't a new development anymore, and the story is no longer what an amazing shift this is in the history of the world, but rather more a story about how colossally ignorant you are of anything that hasn't happened in the past two weeks.

I have been on a bit of an instructional kick lately. Normally I am the sort who just powers on through, figuring things out as I go. Lately though, I have had too much to do, so have been trying to optimize my time by reading up on subjects first, to get a jump on it and maybe not take so long to get up the learning curve. This has, however, brought an annoying trend to my attention, specifically that the Internet is completely worthless. If you ever want to make absolutely sure that you get the worst possible information, ask a blogger. It is, frankly, amazing to me that any group of people can spend so much time writing about a given subject, and not only never get any better at writing, but not even learn a damn thing about their chosen subject. Everything on the web, it would seem, is an opinion based on a popularity contest of ideas someone thinks they might have heard someone talking about once at a coffee shop. No matter how wrong someone is on a given subject, you can invariably find their blog where they authoritatively state their wrongness, to a throng of equally wrong dunderheads, who heap effusive praise on them for reinforcing the inconceivably incorrect idiocy they all firmly believe is truth. I have no doubt that right now you are nothing more than a Google search away from a group of earnest people blogging about how the sky is actually green, or red, or who knows what.

I know, right off the bat I can already hear the blogger response which is invariably a lot of half-understood relativism, mashed-up with a sprinkling of misunderstood political science, mixed with a dash of misplaced revolutionary zeal, some completely misappropriated market theory stirred in, seasoned with some uninformed psychology, and topped with a healthy portion of narcissistic arrogance. It would go something like:

One of the more humorous things I see on the web, is idiots trying to make themselves sound authoritative and erudite by throwing around phrases like "that is a straw man argument," or "I refuse to respond to ad hominem attacks." One of the very worst aspects of the web, is that it arms morons with half-understood knowledge, that they then spit back at you like a poorly-written AIM Bot. Yes, there are a lot of logical fallacies that can be used to gain a sophistic victory by emotionally swaying the audience, or by confusing your opponent to the point where you seem to win without having proven anything. However, an intelligent person, knowledgeable of such things, should be able to clearly and precisely explain exactly where the logical fallacy lies, and illustrate how it is either irrelevant or actually damaging to the opposing argument.

When you just call out a logical fallacy by some name you heard for it on the Internet, or in a debate class, you are in effect saying "I have no adequate response to that, and can't figure out what is wrong with your reasoning, but I think I might have just found a loophole that means I can feel morally justified ignoring everything you say without actually disproving your argument." In fact, one could point out that it is a logical fallacy in and of itself to make that claim, however, being an intelligent person, rather than leaving it there, I will explain further. You see, if you actually know your subject matter, and have a reasonable mind, then no matter what method your opponent uses to try and derail the argument, you should be able to explain how it does not disprove your case. To resort to these childish 'penalty flags' as an out of being logically cornered, is nothing more than intellectual dishonesty. What makes it worse, is that the vast majority of people using these phrases, typically use them incorrectly to begin with.

You know, getting this site up and running has really reminded me why I hate the web, and to a smaller extent Open Source software in general. I think it can best be summed up as a hatred of process over creativity. By that I mean that, unlike traditional software development, everything related to the web seems to be stacked against anyone who actually has any fresh ideas. I suppose, since this site is new, and people I don't know might eventually read some of this, I should explain a little bit about my background here.

I have been designing and building multimedia apps for a very long time. I suppose the first multimedia app I ever built would have been back before the nomenclature "multimedia" had even really been applied to computer programs. It was built in Basic, and ran on a TI99/4A. Since then I have built all sorts of what I suppose would now be called Rich Media Applications®, for everything from broke artist friends, all the way up to Fortune 100 companies. Yet, this is my first real foray into the web in any serious way. The web has always been more my wife's thing, as she worked at a boutique Web studio, a couple .coms, and is now a Senior Producer for Disney Online's international division. Sure, I browse the web just like everyone else. I will comment on the occasional article, and I have even written a few articles for some sites, but I always stayed well away from the web professionally. That might seem like an odd career choice, it being pretty much the best way for someone like me to make a living. However, there is something very different about working on the web than working on standalone applications, and that is the attitude of Webheads.