The web is dead; long live the web. The dead web is Web 1.0. It had dial-up
connections, dot-com crashes and some of the worst business plans since
Napoleon marched on Moscow. The live web is Web 2.0. It has broadband,
enormous interactivity — or “user-generated content” — and Google, a
faith-based operation whose employees proclaim “Thank Google it’s Friday” at
the end of the working week. Web 2.0 makes money and owns the future.
The downside is that Web 2.0 may be destroying civilisation. That, at least,
is the view of Andrew Keen, a Silicon Valley-based British entrepreneur and
author. He has written The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is
Killing Our Culture (due out in June), which argues that the web is an
antienlightenment phenomenon, a destroyer of wisdom and culture and an
infantile, Rousseau-esque fantasy. “It’s the cult of the child,” he says.
“The more you know, the less you know. It’s all about digital narcissism,
shameless self-promotion. I find it offensive.”
Keen is not alone in feeling queasy. Last month, a report by American
psychologists, Inflated Egos over Time, suggested that social-network sites
such as MySpace and YouTube were promoting damagingly high — and illusory —
levels of self-esteem among teenagers. Meanwhile, bloggers have been angered
— it doesn’t take much — by two high-profile attacks from the land of “dead
tree” journalism. In The Times, Oliver Kamm accused bloggers of “poisoning
debate”. “Blogs,” he wrote, “typically do not add to the available stock of
commentary: they are purely parasitic on the stories and opinions that
traditional media provide.” In The Guardian, Jonathan Freedland pointed out
that the abusive, vitriolic nature of many blogs had turned the blogosphere
into a “claustrophobic environment, appealing chiefly to a certain kind of
aggressive, point-scoring male — and utterly off-putting to everyone else”.
Freedland’s crucial point is that the anonymity made possible by web
protocols is at fault. People find it easy to behave badly if nobody knows
who they are.
This, in fact, is a problem built into the very fabric of the internet. Its
design was based on trust among scientists who knew each other. The network
itself was, and remains, open and flexible. But, as the web exploded, this
made life easy for harassers, abusers, spammers and hackers, who could
easily conceal their identity. This can be life-threatening. Blogger Kathy
Sierra (headrush.typepad.com)
had to go into hiding after death threats on other blogs. As a result of all
these abuses, millions are being spent on plans for a total reengineering of
the web to make it secure in the real human world of criminality and
aggression.
Should you care? At the moment, in this country at least, blogs are largely
for other bloggers, and social-networking sites largely for teenagers. Web
2.0 is a large but still specialised phenomenon. But, yes, you should care.
First, because this is, indeed, the future; and, second, because the debates
started by Keen, Kamm and Freedland are too fundamental and too big to
ignore.
To begin at the beginning: the precise nature of Web 2.0 is the subject of
some head-clutching net theology, but its important attribute is
user-generated content. “Letting regular people participate in what was
previously the domain of the few,” is how Chris Anderson puts it. Anderson
is the editor of Wired magazine and author of The Long Tail, one of the many
bibles of Web 2.0. Blogs and social-network sites allow anybody to publish
anything they want. There are more than 70m blogs in the world, and hundreds
of millions of users of MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and the rest, and since all
of these numbers are growing rapidly, we are creating a world in which
everybody can talk — or, more commonly, shout — about themselves to
everybody else. This is already changing politics, the record industry,
printmedia, advertising and will, in time, change, perhaps to the point of
destruction, almost everything else.
Web prophets tend to celebrate this revolutionary transformation in straight
libertarian terms: it gives people freedom. But simple libertarianism is a
meaningless and easy creed. It takes little or no account of Isaiah Berlin’s
crucial distinction between “freedom to” and “freedom from”, the latter
requiring external controls of the individual. Or, as Kris Kristofferson put
it, rather more resonantly, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to
lose.”
In fact, the problem of blog abuse, which is now seen as damaging the entire
medium, has led some of the most senior web prophets to dilute dumb
libertarianism. Tim O’Reilly, entrepreneur and uber-blogger, and Jimmy
Wales, founder of Wikipedia, have come up with a six-point code of conduct
for blogs. Bloggers adhering to this code will carry a badge of compliance
on their sites. Whether this works or not, it shows some awareness of
criticisms like those of Kamm and Keen. But it does nothing to allay Keen’s
fears of a fundamental undermining of our culture. Is he right?
There are many ways to answer that question, but one good place to start is
another Web 2.0 bible, James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many
Are Smarter Than the Few. This is based on the insight that the expression
of many opinions is a better way of attaining either the truth or the
practical than the expressions of just a few. At its heart is a famous
anecdote about Francis Galton, Darwin’s cousin. He went to an agricultural
show and watched a competition to guess the weight of an ox. Galton, a
statistician, gathered together all the guesses and averaged them. The
average was almost exactly right; the guesses of even the most expert
farmers were all wrong.
This is not to advocate simple populism, in which every judgment is based on
surges in mass opinion. Rather, a mediating process — like that of Galton or
that of the market — derives a view from averaging out popular sentiment. If
Web 2.0 expands the number of guesses by hundreds of millions, then we can,
pretty confidently, know what the ox weighs.
Such an idea is an enormous threat to our existing political culture. As
Daniel Finkelstein — master of, for me, the
best blog in Britain, says, Web 2.0’s version of the wisdom of crowds
undermines our political parties. They were founded when there was limited
“shelf space” for comment and access. But now the shelf space is effectively
infinite. We can all take part, all of the time, and individual politicians
will increasingly break away from party discipline to address the online
masses directly.
“Established media provide expertise,” says Finkelstein, “but it’s a small
sample. Some politicians resist this, but saying it’s a bad thing won’t stop
it happening.” Or, as smart blogger Tim Worstall puts it: “Knowledge and
expertise are local, and the x hundreds of thousands or millions of
bloggers will know more in detail on each and every subject than the 500 or
1,000 who work for a media organisation. There’s thus something of a
pressure on that smaller number to raise their game (all to the good, of
course).”
Both the main parties are, somewhat embarrassingly, dipping their toes in
these uncertain waters. Blair is out there on YouTube, and Cameron has the
rather more larky Webcameron. The shadow chancellor, George Osborne, has
also spoken enthusiastically about the need for politicians to fall into the
embrace of Web 2.0. But the big problem, of course, is that this logic
extends far beyond politics into the less tangible world of culture.
Here, Keen is on firm ground. Cultural continuity depends on arbitrary
authority. There is no absolute justification for teaching children
Shakespeare or maths; there is simply the necessity to teach them something
that will place them in their world and show them the height of what we
believe is the highest. But arbitrary authority is anathema to Web 2.0. It
is predicated not just on the wisdom of the crowd, but on its power. So,
Wikipedia can be written and rewritten by everybody who uses it. Applying
Surowiecki’s argument, this should mean it is the most accurate encyclopedia
in the world.
But, of course, it isn’t, because, in this case, the wisdom of the crowd fails
utterly. Wikipedia fails because, though the crowd guessed the weight of the
ox, it didn’t make the ox weigh that much. Its weight was a fact out there
in the world. An elite — scale-makers and compilers of measuring systems —
were the judges of this, not the masses.
Wikipedia has a dodgy relationship with any kind of elite. “Ess-jay”, a
prolific contributor who was said to be a professor with degrees in theology
and canon law, turned out to be Ryan Jordan, a 24-year-old college dropout
from Kentucky. Jordan exploited the trust structure of the internet
technology to pretend he was somebody else, to steal the authority of
academia. And this brings me to the heart of the matter.
In 1993, a cartoon by Peter Steiner appeared in The New Yorker. It showed a
dog at a computer screen explaining to another dog on the floor beside him
that, “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” Of all the things ever
said about the wired world, this was the most prophetic. For Finkelstein is
right to see that the most important part of Freedland’s argument was his
complaint about anonymity. The simple ability to conceal one’s identity is
the deep flaw in the arguments of all Web 2.0’s libertarian boosters.
Psychologists have long been aware that the more people are distanced from
each other, the easier they find it to do them harm. This degrades bloggery.
But, more important, it also threatens all forms of authority. All western —
not just scientific — wisdom is based on identity. Advocates and their
critics can be identified and their ideas formally tested. This is nothing
to do with the statistics of crowds, and everything to do with the authority
of the person. Take that away and truth and judgment become fictions;
Shakespeare is dead and the ox can weigh anything.
Freedom has its uses. I’m a blogger, and I say what I like. But, in the end,
Web 2.0 will only be good for us if, somehow, it succeeds in evolving
towards an identity-based discourse. All else is mere anarchy.
www.bryanappleyard.com
I think such a position is an example of the personality cultism that delegitimizes traditional media even while its fact-finding ability legitimizes it. I think many people are tired of hearing, reading, or watching facts manipulated by a small minority. In fact, "Web 2.0" returns us to the 19th century, when truly independent newspapers, small journals, pamphlets, and posters dominated the distribution of politics. Instead of spending money on paper and ink, radio broadcast equipment, television air-time, etc, the blogger need only write a few paragraphs a day. And if that blogger is a good writer and keeps his facts straight, he can slowly build a reader-base. Once upon a time there were many, many more radio stations than there are now. Will the internet go the same way because elitists want to keep contro
Bob, New York,
You state your conclusion that Wikipedia fails, but the only thing you support it with is the conclusion--completely unsupported--that the theory behind it fails. I've seen this many times, and it's a tempting conclusion to reach, but nobody reconciles it with the fact that Wikipedia *doesn't* fail. It's just conjecture on one side, and on the other side is a voluminous internet resource used by millions or billions of internet scholars.
Thomas, Arcata, California
There is no such thing as anonymity on the internet. Each computer has a unique IP address, just like every house has an address. I have been a computer programmer for 11 years now, and I can assure you that the majority of sites track your IP address, along with everything you do on their site. That's just the way it works. If you really want to know where someone lives, you can trace your IP. How do you think the music industry catches all of the people that download illegal music? They trace IP addresses. The internet is not anonymous by any means, and no one should ever think that it is, or will ever be.
Chris Feilbach - Computer Programmer, Gemantown,
"this is, indeed, the future" - the only time "the future" can be identified is when it has already become the past. One can make predictions about the future and they may, or may not, become the present, and then ultimately the past, but one cannot do so reliably for all but mathematically-based models. Fortunately human beings are still sufficiently varied and interesting to be capable of any number of futures. With regard to interactive content, Wikipedia is wonderful for pop culture, useless for serious academic content (which is rather depressing) and most Blogs are unintelligent windows into the humdrum activities undertaken by most people simply reaffirming existing ideas. An obvious solution, if "Web 2.0" is undesired and perhaps undesirable is simply not to contribute to it. Leave it alone, let it become (or remain) the domain of the navel-gazing few and recognise it as a possible future which did not come to pass. Just like flying cars and infinite leisure...
JS, Cambride,
I disagree. Writing can now be judged on actions, rather than reputations. Credibility is earned through evidence, rather than fame. Wikipedia is better referenced than papers in many academic journals for good reason. A healthy cynicism about web content gets us a long way, and protects us from pariahs.
There is no reason why our information should be filtered through professional journalists with grand reputations. At least I know Wikipedia is censored by the entire world, rather than a couple of media editors with an agenda.
Appleyard contradicts himself. His nanny-state ideal is more akin to "freedom to" [hear only filtered information] than "freedom from" [censorship]. Perhaps we should apply more discerning standards to the press too.
Michael Amior, London,
Anonymity is certainly one of the darker attributes of the internet spectrum. However, we are told that the only way to erase a hard drive is through magnets or axes (the latter often being cathartic) Please correct me if i'm wrong, but doesn't each computer in the world have a unique IP address? If so, does this not make it theoretically possible to trace the origin of anything that is put online?
There are currently many ways to circumvent this, and this may be a far cry from having a person's name attached to a blog entry, but with effort is it not possible to whittle down the identity and location of a blogger?
Like any form of surveillance monitoring, you can be tracked down whoever and wherever you are these days. Rather than reinforcing paranoia, be honest with your ego: Unless you are acting nefariously, why would GCHQ really have any interest in what you have to say?
Alex Fisher, London,
Web 2.0.?
A touch of common sense says always doubt the "unconfirmed". Where someone hides their identity what they have to say will always be unconfirmed.
Wikipedia, some might argue, will there fore always be unconfirmed. I have never and will never use wikipedia alone for sourcing any of my research or opinion. It is a good way to put someone on the right path, but thats it.
As for Blogs, you always have to keep in mind that opinion is the origin for many conflicts in the world, this always has been the case. The majority of people in the world, however, do have the ability to ignore these Internet based sites of opinion as just that. (especially blog based death threats - heh)
Online personal content increasing teenagers self esteem? A reduction in suicides?! nah
It is fantastic that everyone can have a voice this way, but come on - the death of civilisation? No, mealy more to ignore in the way of useless shouting about nothing.
Get busy living
David Henderson, Glasgow, Scotland
The earth is flat and still would be if we choose to listen to the wisdom of the crowd. Every so often a single person will have an idea that will utlimately change the world e.g. Tim Berners Lee. So the wisdom of the crowd may be great but surely it is the ideas of people that are more important.
Robin, Witney, UK
Toys for the boys.....
SK, Bath, UK
We're always hearing journalists and pundits trotting out the same (very few) examples of vandalism to Wikipedia with the implication that these negate its value and undermine its trustworthiness. This does Wikipedia a serious injustice; viewed as a proportion of the whole endeavour, these incidents are trivial indeed and should not give us cause us to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Furthermore, it has self-repairing processes akin to an immune system and is evolving defences to make it harder to perpetrate this kind of vandalism in future - it's certainly not a stationary target.
The mighty Wikipedia is a fantastic resource as its stellar visitor numbers attest. Its intention to provide open access to detailed and (largely) accurate information on such a vast range of topics is a step in the right direction and worthy of respect.
Simon, Hemel Hempstead, UK
The biggest problem is that there are so many blogs, trying so hard to get attention, that there is a blog out there that will confirm your prejudices and strangest opinions. One of the things that keeps us sane (both individually and collectively) is that our weird ideas are rejected by our friends and neighbours. This is a social force that pushes us toward a consensus (even if we never get there).
With the modern internet, everyone can hear what they want to hear, and say what they want to say, so there is less and less of this push toward consensus. Society is at risk of fragmentation.
Worse, some things are actually true, whether the crowds believe or not. They are painstakingly learned, usually by experts, and this hard-earned knowledge can get lost in the noise of the crowds. It's a world where everyone has access to all information, but it's mostly wrong. Who, for instance, has the time or the skill to sort through all those pro- and anti- global warming web-sites?
Greg Kochanski, Oxford,
Oh dear, here we go again, yet more negativity about the Internet. As an Internet Psychologist who has been studying the impact of this technology on human behaviour for the past 10 years or so it's clear to me that the Internet is the most important development since the origination of language itself. The difficulty is that we are in the "birth" stages of the technology at the moment. That's probably why articles like this one get written - they are based on the "muddle" that we are in, without considering the way the web is taking us. For instance, considering that Wikipedia is inaccurate is actually to miss the point. True it has inaccuracies, but so does The Times. Indeed, an academic study which analysed Wikipedia found it had the same error rate as The Encyclopaedia Brittanica.
Graham Jones - Internet Psychologist, Reading, UK
Once responsibility (authorship) has been removed from what is said - anything said will soon have no meaning. And that's where our concern should be! Listen to the news each night - say it loud and say it often and even a pure untruth is believed as truth.
John, Hillsborough, NJ
The gap between what exists in the real world and what is perceived on the internet grows with each new online phenomenon, and with more people embrassing this each day, an eventual conflict of intrests will arise if users can be held accountable personally, for what happens in cyberspace.
It could be argued that anonymity is the best way to protect people on the internet. Less of a link between what is acceptable in the real world, and that which is posted on the internet means that freedom is partially preserved for those whose intrests clash.
The internet evolved with almost boundless freedom, however with the worries over net neutrality and now; accountability, the fate of the global phenomena is uncertain.
However, all that is certain, is that an ox will be defined by mass, rather than weight.
George Kokkinos, West Drayton, Middlesex
The blogosphere represents no threat except to vested interests. Death threats mean nothing as you can’t be killed on line. The news papers produce much rubbish masquerading as informed comment, andmany blogs are better informed with better analysis. Much that is written in the press, especially the tabloids, poisons real debate.
The article above to me seems more about self-preservation and Luddism than any real threat from blogging.
YouTube does not give teens a heightened sense of their value or self-importance, because most teens already feel either inferior or superior. They form groups, disband groups write diaries and bitch about each other. All that is happening is some of it is transferring to the web.
Neil Murphy, cromer,
What garbage. Blogs are just another medium, like dead trees or radio, and, as in those media, the good stuff will stick while the bad will sink. The current noise around "web 2.0" is just froth produced by talking heads with nothing to say (see above).
Ian, Basel,
Mr Keen's book reminds me of the eighteenth century pamphleteer who railed against stagecoaches because they were destructive to horsemanship, encouraged effeminacy, and were undermining the social and the economic order. Society changes and moves on. If the existing civilisation is being destroyed it is in the service of creating the civilisation to come.
Gregory, Lincoln, UK
What if they had used a heavier than average ox that day?
Frank H, London,
Your piece deftly navigates around the cultural pros and cons of the web. The fear of technology has been portrayed in media ever since there was media. I'm no luddite, but I do fear how our new virtual world is going effect culture as we know it -- which is a fundamentally flawed concern since culture is never static.
RJ Lavallee, Walnut Creek, CA, USA
When AOL started giving away free CDs, the USENET community worried about what would happen when all those spotty teenagers started posting. What happened was that they segregated themselves away in their own newsgroups; the kind of useful discussion that went on before was of no interest to them, any more than their topics of conversation were to the old-timers.
What is necessary for a bad blog to become threat to civilisation is for the scale-makers to take it as seriously as its author does. What is necessary to protect civilisation is for the scale-makers to take what they read there with a large pinch of salt. If they're even aware it exists.
Ian Kemmish, Biggleswade, UK
"All western — not just scientific — wisdom is based on identity. Advocates and their critics can be identified and their ideas formally tested." This is a fine sentiment. In principle, I strongly agree, supporting the authenticity of real persons, and the views they, as person, advocate. Unfortunately, in science (and other so-called scholarly discourse), it is only partly true. It is routine in assessment of academic papers for publication, or grant applications, for reviewers to remain anonymous, and journals and grant-giving bodies commonly insist on this practice. As a result, these anonymous reviewers sometimes use their position just as do anonymous bloggers - exercising power without responsibility. If scientists are asked for the views, they would have much greater authenticity, in my view, if they were willing to put their names to those views (the same point made here about anonymous bloggers).
Robert Miller, Dunedin, New Zealand