Here I am, cruising on Slashdot and I come across this topic talking about the newly announced iPad. Yes, it is the very latest in “new thing that they shout you must own because it will change your life” from Apple. Only this time I can’t see a single time I would actually use it. I have looked at e-readers and it might be handy as one, but I prefer e-ink technology that you could actually read in sunlight and has better battery life than the backlit screen the iPad has. For everything else, I already have a tool for the job. Watch a movie? I’ve got the iMac or my own PC. Music? iMac, PC, iPhone, Sansa player…the list goes on. Web access? iMac, PC, two laptops, iPhone. Exactly why would I need this? In the comments I pretty much said as much and watched the strange case of moderation on Slashdot, watching my posts getting modded up, then down, then back up a bit, then hovering back and forth. Ultimately, the Mac fanboys modded me down on a few posts I thought were more relevant, but my stronger posts were modded up. I actually savored the responses from people who wore their allegiances on their sleeve, say…actually praising mac in your username. Folks, you have around sixteen characters to squeeze that in, so no subtlety there. Still, there was some satisfaction on smacking down fawning users from the Apple cult about their latest, underwhelming offering.
All of this got me thinking that as far as we’ve gotten with the internet, we’ve still not worked out the obvious, fatal flaw which is that there’s an enormous number of assholes on it. Over at ThinkLynsen, they had a back and forth about the internet and whether the net result is good or bad. I’m not ready to wade into that argument quiet yet, but I can say this; people now can say things without repercussion because it’s easy to hide behind an alias online and it’s surprisingly easy to find sources that support any side. Never mind those sources themselves are compromised and reek of snake oil, now you can quote someone else whose batshit insane theories are taken as word of God proof. Actual research is worthless because there’s some guy in Utah who says that your best friends are fascists.
The most recent example I have of this is when I was playing one of my games and in the group chat window broke out a “discussion” about global warming, basically trotting out every crackpot theory against it and going on about the evil scientist cabal who are only in it for the money and those fat scientific grants. Seems to me that nothing quite stirs up polarization like talking about global warming, so I waded into it and basically called all of those guys ignorant. Here was my problem with their comments. There are a lot of people who talk about global warming, anonymously of course, who claim to know all of the facts. This is without the time or resources invested to make such a judgment. Instead of taking ten-plus years of your life to dedicate learning the sciences, specializing in climate research, finding a field of study, working on a question of science, finding the resources to investigate the question and spending every waking moment of the next decade testing and running the numbers to see if you were right, often building on the work of others who have done the same thing, then turning your work over to the scientific community who will try their damnedest to rip your work to shreds. If it passes the rigor of all of that work, then the research itself slips, often quietly, into the scientific body of knowledge. That, to me, is an expert position. For me, when nearly the entire community of scientists from all over the globe who study climate science say that CO2 is a problem and we should maybe look at fixing it, I tend to trust the people who have that expertise, not the random internet poster who doesn’t find capitalization or correct punctuation necessary.
The internet has allowed people to create their own sound chambers with similar people who all spout off the same information, which in their minds somehow makes it more infallible. Then they turn around and spew their idiot theories on the internet with no one to challenge them on their thought process or sources. And it is because it is all done under aliases and anonymity where we can say the most crazy things without actually facing the people we’re trying to convince.
I believe it’s because of experiences I’ve had which pretty much put me in Josh’s camp about whether the internet has been a positive force or not. Take some place like the Star Tribune, a newspaper with a baffling comment policy, regularly trolled by the same people spouting off the same nonsense, day in and day out. Comment threads were initially meant to inspire conversation, but it’s just often a soap box for those least able to articulate nuanced positions to shout the item of the day presented by their corporate masters from their “rebellious” website. Unfortunately, it puts me off the website. I don’t want to go to the website, not because of the content from the newspaper, but from the idiot commenters who will take any story no matter how benign and turn it into a political rant. This is our internet today. Frankly, it needs a bit of work.
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