Imagine entering a room filled with people; each person is reciting a different dissertation. In this room there are twenty-five individuals, providing twenty-five unique recitations at once. These orations range in value (either intrinsic or instrumental) from Descartes' Meditationes de Prima Philosophia down to your kindergarten niece's essay on why she dislikes broccoli. While the former may seem a bit inaccessible to the average person, the latter is rather useless to the same.
Now imagine the room being the size of your high school gymnasium, filled shoulder-to-shoulder with individuals, each saying something different in no particular direction at the same time. Now imagine this in Rungrado May Day Stadium in Pyongyang, North Korea, which has a capacity of 187,000 people (not counting any that may be standing on the field). Multiple this experience several thousand times over and you would have the rough equivalent of the internet. Each saying something different and unique and ranging in either intrinsic or instrumental value. In most cases, however, the topic tends to lean towards your kindergarten niece's; and rather than her being eight, she is, in fact, thirty-four.
Stepping into this sort of scenario poses a certain quandary: why bother? Why would anyone bother to brave this level of social vomit spilling all over their nice new carpet? The answer for an average person seems to be, so that they, too, can vomit all over someone's carpet. Gross.
This isn't always the case, however. Once one gets closer and closer to this experience, the fairly generic answer that has been posed here seems to change. In the case of Linkara at Atop the Fourth Wall, it's to inform people about how he feels about certain comic books (specifically the bad ones). By effectively combining his English major with his passion for comic books he not only provides entertainment, but also provides consumer report for certain brands as well as provides a "How to..." for amateur comic book writers like myself (in this case, "How to Not Write Like a Thirteen Year Old Who Thinks Big Guns and Boobies Are Awesome").
A very similar scenario occurs with Spoony of the Spoony Experiment, where he combines his... well, he takes his passion for video games and movies (both good and bad) and critiques them based on their virtues and vices. Again, providing entertainment, consumer reports (all be them delayed), and another instance of "How to Not Write like a Retard" - in the case of Final Fantasy VIII, "How to Not Create One of the Most Derived, Pointless, Angst-Ridden, Ridiculous Games Ever; Volumes I and II."
This changes when turning the focal point to someone like the Sardonic Girl, who writes a blog in order to keep her friends and family who live out of state updated about the happenings in her life with one swift post. She's not attempting to get more followers, but rather is trying to maintain connections with her current social group. I find her blog particular useful as it allows me to find out how I'm doing as her paramour - referred to as Justin until I convince her to change it to devin - without having to directly ask her to give me a score one-to-ten (one being the worst).
Each of these is a prime example of how to best approach the vast social consciousness that is the internet. They've identified their audience, speak to said audience, and don't attempt to reach beyond said audience. They know that said audience doesn't care if they dislike broccoli, and probably doesn't care much about their critique of skeptic philosophies.
A problem arises, however, when pattern recognition takes hold. At some point, be it obsolescence, by our own doing, or an unpredictable act of nature (e.g. a commet or massive solar flare) causes the internet to become very inaccessible. While anthropologists of the future - be them human or otherwise - may discover the many, many servers spread throughout the world and may find reference to the internet in our physical writings, that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be able to access it.
Remember that they would have to be able to decipher multiple languages, not just English. These languages would probably include binary, hexidecimal, ASCII, HTML, and then any language that any text they’re trying to translate was written in. Just to translate the Sardonic Girl's most recent post, they would need at least four different Rosetta Stones - assuming that English is still a spoken language. Probably a fifth would be necessary to effectively access the videos posted on Linkara and Spoony's respective blogs.
So the question still stands: why bother? As it turns out this is something that's already been answered. Partially here, but more fully elsewhere. In countless sites across the world, early humans have demarcated their own hands on rock through various methods. Some use an "air brush" technique by placing the pulverized plant material in their mouth and then spitting or blowing the material over their hand while it's pressed up against the rock creating a simple outline. Others discovered that they could use a "stamp" approach and place the early ink on the bottom of their hands and then press it up against the wall.
Many debates as to the specifics of what these hand prints mean occur within the Anthropological, Sociological, Philosophical, and Psychological communities; be it a signature for each individual within that social group, or perhaps a coming-of-age ceremony, or its simply Mrs. Ug'nut's second grade class representation of turkeys. Much like what will inevitably become of the current form of the internet, the format of the handprint on stone has become obsolete. We will never know the exact message that early humans were trying to convey, but there is a consensus on the conscious theme: I am here; I am human.
History is full of lost languages and lost information, yet that does not deter humans from continuing to speak their mind. While the Sardonic Girl, Spoony, Linkara, and the many others online each have a different thing to say, a different way to say it, and a different audience to say it to; they say it in response to the most basic of human existential crisis in the face of a largely cold and uncaring world. And now I, too, am saying it. I am here. I am human. I've created a blog. Please follow it.
Now imagine the room being the size of your high school gymnasium, filled shoulder-to-shoulder with individuals, each saying something different in no particular direction at the same time. Now imagine this in Rungrado May Day Stadium in Pyongyang, North Korea, which has a capacity of 187,000 people (not counting any that may be standing on the field). Multiple this experience several thousand times over and you would have the rough equivalent of the internet. Each saying something different and unique and ranging in either intrinsic or instrumental value. In most cases, however, the topic tends to lean towards your kindergarten niece's; and rather than her being eight, she is, in fact, thirty-four.
Stepping into this sort of scenario poses a certain quandary: why bother? Why would anyone bother to brave this level of social vomit spilling all over their nice new carpet? The answer for an average person seems to be, so that they, too, can vomit all over someone's carpet. Gross.
This isn't always the case, however. Once one gets closer and closer to this experience, the fairly generic answer that has been posed here seems to change. In the case of Linkara at Atop the Fourth Wall, it's to inform people about how he feels about certain comic books (specifically the bad ones). By effectively combining his English major with his passion for comic books he not only provides entertainment, but also provides consumer report for certain brands as well as provides a "How to..." for amateur comic book writers like myself (in this case, "How to Not Write Like a Thirteen Year Old Who Thinks Big Guns and Boobies Are Awesome").
A very similar scenario occurs with Spoony of the Spoony Experiment, where he combines his... well, he takes his passion for video games and movies (both good and bad) and critiques them based on their virtues and vices. Again, providing entertainment, consumer reports (all be them delayed), and another instance of "How to Not Write like a Retard" - in the case of Final Fantasy VIII, "How to Not Create One of the Most Derived, Pointless, Angst-Ridden, Ridiculous Games Ever; Volumes I and II."
This changes when turning the focal point to someone like the Sardonic Girl, who writes a blog in order to keep her friends and family who live out of state updated about the happenings in her life with one swift post. She's not attempting to get more followers, but rather is trying to maintain connections with her current social group. I find her blog particular useful as it allows me to find out how I'm doing as her paramour - referred to as Justin until I convince her to change it to devin - without having to directly ask her to give me a score one-to-ten (one being the worst).
Each of these is a prime example of how to best approach the vast social consciousness that is the internet. They've identified their audience, speak to said audience, and don't attempt to reach beyond said audience. They know that said audience doesn't care if they dislike broccoli, and probably doesn't care much about their critique of skeptic philosophies.
A problem arises, however, when pattern recognition takes hold. At some point, be it obsolescence, by our own doing, or an unpredictable act of nature (e.g. a commet or massive solar flare) causes the internet to become very inaccessible. While anthropologists of the future - be them human or otherwise - may discover the many, many servers spread throughout the world and may find reference to the internet in our physical writings, that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be able to access it.
Remember that they would have to be able to decipher multiple languages, not just English. These languages would probably include binary, hexidecimal, ASCII, HTML, and then any language that any text they’re trying to translate was written in. Just to translate the Sardonic Girl's most recent post, they would need at least four different Rosetta Stones - assuming that English is still a spoken language. Probably a fifth would be necessary to effectively access the videos posted on Linkara and Spoony's respective blogs.
So the question still stands: why bother? As it turns out this is something that's already been answered. Partially here, but more fully elsewhere. In countless sites across the world, early humans have demarcated their own hands on rock through various methods. Some use an "air brush" technique by placing the pulverized plant material in their mouth and then spitting or blowing the material over their hand while it's pressed up against the rock creating a simple outline. Others discovered that they could use a "stamp" approach and place the early ink on the bottom of their hands and then press it up against the wall.
Many debates as to the specifics of what these hand prints mean occur within the Anthropological, Sociological, Philosophical, and Psychological communities; be it a signature for each individual within that social group, or perhaps a coming-of-age ceremony, or its simply Mrs. Ug'nut's second grade class representation of turkeys. Much like what will inevitably become of the current form of the internet, the format of the handprint on stone has become obsolete. We will never know the exact message that early humans were trying to convey, but there is a consensus on the conscious theme: I am here; I am human.
History is full of lost languages and lost information, yet that does not deter humans from continuing to speak their mind. While the Sardonic Girl, Spoony, Linkara, and the many others online each have a different thing to say, a different way to say it, and a different audience to say it to; they say it in response to the most basic of human existential crisis in the face of a largely cold and uncaring world. And now I, too, am saying it. I am here. I am human. I've created a blog. Please follow it.
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