I somehow 'ran into' http://www.internetisshit.org/ again, and it made me think a bit about what the internet has done so far, and if it's really shit.
Especially the next part caught my attention:"And look what we've done with it. Food wrappers and soap operas now tell us to visit their websites. Money is pumped online by people who can't even spell HTML. All manner of pointless and irritating content is continually poured down the infinite hole of data, unfiltered and over-appreciated. In accepting freedom of speech, we can't hide from its consequences - which in this case is millions of terabytes of unreliable information, badly designed and clumsily written. We have failed our own creation and given birth something truly awful. We're just too busy cooing over the pram to notice."The creator of the website has some good points here. A large part of the world wide web (I think saying 'the Internet' is somewhat misplaced) is crap, and the only reason some things exists is because it's relatively easy and cheap to put something online.On the other hand, I (and most likely very much other people) use the WWW quite often, and I assume I wouldn't be doing that if everything on it was crap. Social networking websites (how overhyped some might be) enable you to meet new (and potentially interesting) people you wouldn't have 'known' otherwise. Sharing information is easy and fast, even if there are enough places that contain false data. People with the same interests start communities you maybe couldn't start in real life, etc.The question is of course, if you'd call all this really useful. Maybe the writer is right and we should stop "aimlessly surfing for something amusing when we could actually be doing something fun"?What do you think?
People always talked shit, even before the internet, so don't be afraid of that. Before there was misinformation, there was non-information.
However I do think most internet socializing is becoming increasingly unhealthy, you only have to look at "Anonymous" or Facebook to see that.The internet is a supplement, not a replacement.
@Toast: Anon? Socializing? Not a very good example :)
Even if people have always talked shit and that the Internet is not a replacement, not everyone looks at it that way. Referring to another part on internetisshit.org:"The internet is not the sole basis upon which you can determine existence. It sounds simple but people are starting to forget."Even if you understand something, other people might not.Juju hit the nail on the head with this one. The internet is a tool, but not the only tool.
The internet is a lot better than watching tv. It's a mix of useless stuff, recreational stuff and time wasting stuff.
A lot better than watching TV? That's not even the point.
If the point is the internet is crap, then whether its better than previous technologies is the point. I haven't looked at the actual website, I'm just commenting on the idea that the internet is crap.
Deploying surprise in five…four….
*thud*Time out for a second. That wasn't supposed to happen.Imo Anonymous is expressing morbid opinions and content without any social consequence, so yes, it is a good example. They mightn't know each other personally but nevertheless they refer to themselves as a group and they talk to each other.
The internet is crap in a lot of ways. The protocols we use aren't particularly great, nor are the backbones. The content is sometimes a bit lacking too. But it gives us a medium that in thousands of years of human interaction we've never seen before. I am here, pressing keys and seeing words appear on my screen, and when I click "Post", several billion people will have the ability to read that. And if I wanted to, I could create something similar, and give it a name, without being restricted by my local government, or forced to pay for anything more than the services of a domain registrar. The internet is somewhat of a wild west at the moment, it'll calm down in time, but I doubt the core values will change much. I can, right now, speak, vocally, to somebody halfway around the world, and even see their face, free of charge. I can watch telivision shows that haven't been aired in 50 years, or search the largest knowledge base man has ever had in an instant. No other medium has such varied and widespread usage - so of course, there's a lot of crap. There's a lot of crap on TV, and that's entirely controlled by large corporations. The internet is any man's land.