The Dangerous Effects of Reading | Certain Extent.
I love this article. It puts into words thoughts and opinions I’ve been trying to wrap my head around for some time.
The Internet is designed to help us judge more efficiently.
Whether it be “Likes”, “Plusses”, “Followers”, “Stamps”, “Visits”, or any other metric we come up with to validate literally anything, we’ve built this culture around us that does nothing to help us discover or create unless we have the approval of others.
In addition to that, this massive social aspect of the Web creates so much noise it takes more effort than ever to get something in front of the masses. We’ve become so desensitized to the information flow around us, it takes (usually quite fleeting) extraordinary acts or “popular” people to get our attention.
It’s a dangerous, stagnant place we’ve invented here.
I’m noticing something new brewing, however. It’s likely because we’ve reached the end of the year, but I’m hearing more and more ‘high profile’ industry folks take notice of the fact that we’ve all been sitting around consuming, it’s time to express opinions, share, and give back. Here’s to hoping it doesn’t feed the machine of social votes and other gamification, but I fear at this point that’s unavoidable.
Comments
I believe this lends itself to a much larger conversation. I’ll go ahead and say it: The Internet is a huge place. I spent the majority of my time working on a ‘social’ application, and when I step back and look I can’t help but think there is a better to way to manage the collective intelligence and reputations of people and objects.
Couple this with the fact that there are so many islands out there that will never be joined, it makes for a very noisy ecosystem.
I think this has lead to a lot of people suffering from minor ADD, as they race to try and read everything and keep up with everything and try every new tool, gadget, or gizmo. It’s always good to review content sources and applications, and see where the real value lies for your own personal time.