Internet use

For my long reading list, both of the books I read relating to the internet were a bit disappointing, though they had interesting points.

The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age by Astra Taylor, 2012.

The problem with this one was that a lot of the problems with the internet she touched on had already been gone over in the other book (which we will get to). She referred to the author, and I believe I grasped her book better because I had read Lanier's book, but that made her book repetitive. Then she had just a few pages on potential solutions that started to get exciting right as the book ended. Really, she should have reversed the percentage of pages devoted to each aspect, but I suspect she might not have had enough more to say on solutions.

On to the other book.

You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier, 2010.

I think this came off as better not just because I read it first, but he gave more of the history, especially relating to Web 2.0, which did a better job of establishing context.

One of Lanier's points that stayed with me was that improvements to search engines had been detrimental in some ways. Before if you had an obscure interest in something you had to find obscure little Usenet sites, and relationships were formed through these common interests. Now people just look things up on Wikipedia.

It resonated with me because I remember when the first response to every search started being Wikipedia, to the point where for various topics I go there first. I also remember hanging out on the old IMDB message boards, hoping for chances to answer obscure movie questions, and still getting fond of the people who usually answered the questions first.

That also shed some light on what I was looking for, though I shall get there in a roundabout way.

The issue that I was looking at was not really one issue. There is growing lack of empathy and lack of depth and shorter attention spans, but also less interest in paying for things that we used to pay for (like music and news) because so much can be gotten free, which of course affects how we value the people who provide content, and there is a lot of abuse there, but that may relate to the lack of empathy, and so on.

There was not a good question that could be stated succinctly. "How can we not let the internet make us worse people?" Because the internet has good, and good people use it, and it's certainly not the only factor in people becoming dumber and meaner.

Without it being one clear question, there was not one simple answer, and I already knew parts of the answers. What I was hoping was that the books could give an answer that was clear and electrifying; something that could be passed on and people who needed it would recognize their need and go "Yeah!" In retrospect, it sounds naive.

One of the things that I remembered with this is that I am unusually good at internet research. That may not sound like a real skill, because internet research is so easy. It is to a point, but because there are some things that come up so easily, if you want something a little bit off from that, then phrasing can become very important, and knowing how to refine the search. Knowing what will give you the wrong results is really helpful.

The reason I am good at internet research is that I had a job once where we were researching things a lot, and it was before Google. We collected different search engines, because none of them would find everything available. Of course, there wasn't as much information on the World Wide Web twenty years ago anyway, but there was still a lot, and getting there took more effort.

Yahoo! was the best at the time, and generally where I started. We also used Lycos and Dogpile, and Hotbot and Infoseek. AltaVista was okay, but I loved it most for Babelfish. I tried Ask Jeeves, but did not find it useful. Northern Light was the one I discovered, and it would come through at the oddest times.

I started this job in 1997. Google came out in 1998, and it blew the rest away. I loved Google. I love Wikipedia. Without taking anything away from them, my point is that even if it only lasted for about a year, that time period where I was scrambling, without the cushy search engine and online encyclopedia, was good for me. I developed not just skills, but frames of reference and ways of understanding that are still useful.

In the same way, that time period of my life before the internet (and I love the internet) was good for me. I have the ability to concentrate, and to read, and think deeply, and to write letters and socialize.

Younger people may not have ever known that time when the internet wasn't there, but they can still step back. We don't have to hand phones and tablets to toddlers. Face to face communication can happen without emojis, when empathy is built. There are things that we do that are easy, but not required. Some of it is just a matter of establishing priorities.

I believe the internet does me more good than harm, but I also come to it as a person who is looking for good, which any of us can be.

That is only helped by periodic unplugging. Maybe an internet connection is only as good as your other levels of connection.