I’m the first to admit that such a perspective hides as much as it reveals; never believe anyone who says that you have to “be there to understand.” My initial reaction to the media fascination with the “YouTube/Facebook/Twitter Generation” was pure confusion. If we’re in the middle of a revolution, it certainly doesn’t feel like it. What are these old folks getting so excited about?
But this is more than a little myopic. The fact is that things like Google have become second nature to many of us, so that what came before is basically inconceivable. It’s only when we step back and think about just how much more information we have instant access to — the names of obscure songs, the status of long-lost friends — that we gain a sense of perspective, or at least a sense of how incomprehensible pre-Web perspectives have become.
There are other ways, however, that a user’s-eye view might be useful. It is unafraid, for instance, to note the simple fact that the internet is a graveyard of petty dreams. I have personally launched two blogs and a Twitter page. Among the three, I have written five posts and about 470 words, none of them particularly worth reading. Given how few blogs have gained wide readerships — or, judging from the fact that “0 comments” is probably the most pervasive phrase in the blogosphere, any fan base whatsoever — it’s probably worth tempering talk of a new dawn of personal expression.
This points to something else: The internet represents a distinctly harsh brand of meritocracy. It humbles as well as empowers. By opening up public discourse, by radically transforming the way we contribute to and access our culture’s stock of images and messages, blogs and video hosts have given nobodies with no pull an opportunity to make their voices heard. While there have been some notable gems, many of those nobodies have, like me, contributed little more than self-indulgent chatter.
The real-time historical analysis attempted by Web 2.0 boosters, then, is (in no small irony) a history of “great men,” of people willing to infuse their work with professionalism. We seem to intuitively agree with Truman Capote’s dismissal of Jack Kerouac’s stream-of-consciousness work: “This isn’t writing, it’s typing.” And indeed, some have plausibly argued that, whatever their iconoclastic claims, such Web communities as the “New Media” are utterly dependent on the work of well-funded professionals.
There is also a more sinister side to the continued relevance of professionalism. By playing on the perceived “democratization” of the internet, powerful interests — corporations, pressure groups, politicians — can make top-down operations look user-driven, creating an illusion of individual control. “Astroturfing,” a play on the term “grassroots,” for our Luddite community, is amusing enough when it involves a forum user waxing romantic about Mountain Dew Code Red. Less amusing, however, is the fact that the “youth-driven” Obama campaign, led in part by master astroturfer David Axelrod, employed a Web strategy that used “social media” to disseminate and reproduce a meticulously devised, carefully calibrated message.
It seems, then, that the experience of the past few years has been one of relearning old maxims. It is clear that not everyone is equally talented or interesting, and our failed forays into the blogosphere may impart some old-fashioned humility. It is clear, too, that the cycle of resistance and co-optation is an enduring one.
I suspect that, even when it comes to the most radical transformation brought by the internet — the rise of “insta-knowledge” — this relearning will play itself out. Internet doomsayers often harp on the difference between information and true knowledge, claiming that our dependence on Google and Wikipedia has collapsed the distinction between the two. Social networking has also taken flack: Blogging in The American Scene, Reihan Salam claims that the sort of “social distance” between ex-lovers chronicled in such films as Annie Hall “has been obliterated in the age of social graph gluttony.”
But if the distinction between knowledge and information is a real one, then our easy access to the latter will only force us to confront and appreciate this distinction more fully. In a more philosophical mood, we might even say that social networking has further illuminated the gap between our self-presentation and who we really are; Annie Hall would have proven no less distant to Alvy Singer, no less of a mystery, if the two were Facebook friends.
By now, though, I’m probably starting to sound like one of those Web 2.0 prophets. We should probably leave the task of fleshing out the full meaning of the internet to future historians. As for any further speculations and musings, well, that’s what my blogs are for.
Andrew Saraf is a politics major from Chevy Chase, Md. He can be reached at asaraf@princeton.edu.
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