On Wednesday I was listening to NPR on the way home from work, and they broadcast a report, less than ten minutes long, regarding the state of the Web.
I regret to say I’ve been unable to find it, because it actually had an impact on me.
To summarize, they claimed that, unlike ten or fifteen years ago, the state of the offerings of the big institutions of the Web, such as Google, and perhaps the digital news organizations, have declined. In Google’s case, for example, they said the searches one might enter no longer return current entries, but more likely those that are obviously commercial and of marginal relevance, or even dead links.
OK, so we know that without numbers it’s difficult to be sure this report is meaningful. Maybe the reporter(s) had some constipation that day, or the Google search engine was hiccuping, or whatever.
But, later, it did occur to me that this is congruent with a view of the Web as a Commons. Commons is a political economics term:
The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. These resources are held in common even when owned privately or publicly. Commons can also be understood as natural resources that groups of people (communities, user groups) manage for individual and collective benefit. Characteristically, this involves a variety of informal norms and values (social practice) employed for a governance mechanism. Commons can also be defined as a social practice of governing a resource not by state or market but by a community of users that self-governs the resource through institutions that it creates.
Related to commons is the term tragedy of the commons, which is basically the plundering of a resource which lacks natural, enforceable restraints on its use while remaining valuable. This happens with many resources, from our atmosphere to fisheries to potable water.
And, I think, we can add the Web to that list. We’ve made access to the Web, as both consumers and creators, virtually cost-free; for example, this web-site costs me a couple of hundred dollars a year, if memory serves, which means I can author, to a potentially huge audience, for a pittance. We treat it like an unlimited resource. This combination makes the Web a commons. Another couple of hundred for basic access, i.e., consumption, and the investment is very cheap for what I get in return.
Except … if we believe the NPR report, it’s not as high as it was in the past. Services such as the Google search engine made the overwhelming problem of organizing our searches tractable – raise your hand if you remember Alta Vista, and how Google prompted cries of glee. But if our searches are beginning to return irrelevancies, is the Web still useful?
If news organizations are spewing more and more “sponsored content,” which is often commercials masquerading as news reports, are they as valuable as we like to think? Indeed, throw in the loss of traditional news organizations such as hometown newspapers, and now we have to ask: have we lost our most valuable public intangible resource, our news organizations, as we discover the digital news media is not nearly as useful?
My mind is flooding with metaphors, I fear. Along with the tragedy of the commons, I have to wonder if our thunderous rush for “free news” has been the equivalent of subsisting on pure high fructose corn syrup – oh so good for our taste buds, but oh so damaging to our health.
Back to my speculation focus. The Web has become a focus for damage: malware for our computers, attacks on our infrastructure, disinformation campaigns from Russia and other entities, development of certain AI techniques dependent on huge amounts of training data and ongoing energy consumption, cryptocurrency and its associated scams and energy consumption, deepfake videos, the violence endemic with online communities of violent personalities, and so many more that slip my mind.
My goodness.
I have to wonder: Who will walk away from the Web as it continues to degrade? Addicts to social media are faced with quite a mountain, and some commit suicide, but non-addictive personalities may begin to stream, if they haven’t already, away from the Web. There’s a lot more to life than sitting in front of a computer talking to maybe-people maybe-chatbots-from-Russia for hours/days/weeks/months on end.
Says the guy who’s been in social media for forty years.
I suspect the Web will turn into a resource where some places, like Wikipedia, will remain up and valuable, even when attacked, commercial entities will fight to entice the unwary into their webs, the dark Web will continue but not be a place for the naive.
And a lot of people will not otherwise use it. Some, like the hipsters, may even look to resurrect the institutions of a more stable societal time.
I look forward to see how this works out. Heavens knows the ice fishing hobby remains so popular that the ice fishers ignore the warnings and end up being rescued around here when the ice breaks up.
But rebuilding society around ice fishing during climate change might be a bit foolish.
