A Convention of Imbeciles

I may have noted before that the social tools of Web 2.0 do not represent new capabilities, but merely provide an easier way to do things that have been possible all along (for example, it was possible, albeit more difficult, to create and maintain a personal Web site before blogging came along), but what has been the result of that?

I read a blog entry that left me with mixed feelings about the more serious issue facing the Web: that the abundance of content that has arisen from Web 2.0 is not necessarily better, just more, and the effect has been more detrimental than beneficial.

The author's thrust was that an "average" person with a blog is like an idiot with a bullhorn, who can now say idiotic things very loudly, as if the volume of his message makes it somehow less idiotic. And moreover, that the emergence of social media has given a bullhorn to every idiot, transforming the Internet into a cacophony of dunces, all attempting to out-shout one another - and in the process, the information that comes from reliable sources is drowned out.

I can't entirely disagree with that. While I don't accept the opinion that the average person is an idiot at all times, I have to concede that even intelligent people can be idiotic at times (present company included), especially when they choose to act in an asinine manner to call attention to themselves, or have an overpowering urge to express (or repeat) an opinion without having much knowledge or understanding of it.

I would also maintain that, in spite of the ocean of uninformed babble, the emergence of social media technology has also drawn out a lot of expertise from individuals who are both thoughtful and well-informed, but who thus far have been unable to leverage the Internet because they lacked technical sophistication.

The author's argument in that regard was that the necessity of technical knowledge - at the very least, to be able to compose and upload a Web page - was a kind of idiot filter. If you could not figure out how to perform those simple tasks, then you're probably not a very intelligent person anyway, and it's just as well that the world will never hear from you.

And again, I can't completely disagree with that notion, but would counter technical expertise has very little to do with subject-matter expertise for a vast majority of topics. A physicist who does not know how to develop a Web page is still an expert in physics, even moreso than the person who does know how to develop a web page and knows nothing about the subject at all.

Seen that way, the early Internet prior to social media was no less a cacophony of dunces: there were fewer of them, but those who were speaking did not have any special qualification to discuss the topics at hand, any more than the masses of people who can now communicate due to the ease of use.

The conclusion I'm aiming toward (in the usual wending way) is that knowledge of how to create a Web site is a lot like the knowledge of how to type a letter - it's a clerical task. What distinguishes idiot from expert is not knowing how to use a typewriter or how to compose and upload a Web page, but the knowledge of the subject being discussed.

And while I'll concede that social media has handed out bullhorns to idiots, it has also handed them to very knowledgeable people as well, who have contributed valuable information to the Internet.

What's lacking now is the ability to sort and filter through the din. You can't stop the idiots from shouting, but you can choose which sources you listen to and reply upon. This problem is also nothing new, and I hope an expect that within the next decade, a solution will be found.