I don't mean that. Anyone who spends as much time online as I do couldn't possibly mean that. However, several things I've heard/seen/read today make have made me want to want to get back to the golden days of the telegraph, or even the numbered days of the pony express.
My main beef is with Yahoo, the search engine/email portal I've been loyal to these past three years. Recently, I've noticed that Yahoo's "content" has become more and more tawdry, with a tiny box just within the reach of my browser screen that summarizes that day's tabloid news. It's basically everything you could glean from the mags at the grocery store checkout aisle in four or five pithy hyperlinks. The story currently causing me pain is that of Tom Cruise and the sonogram machine he's bought to follow the development of his unborn child. I'm not going to "blame our culture" for feeding me this crap; I blame myself for taking the bait. I first noticed it last week, the link accompanied by a picture of Cruise himself, grinning maniacally, with a caption that read: "Daddy's Watching." Today, the story progressed. Apparently the medical community frowns on this purchase, and fears for the fetus's safety. When I noticed this, I wanted to fire off a nasty email to Yahoo, just because this story had taken a second turn, and it would probably take another, and I would probably read it. Unfortunately I couldn’t find an "Email Us" link on Yahoo, so I went to blogger.com instead.
The alternative is Google. I'm constantly amazed by their innovations, like the hybrid maps that put the street names over satellite photos. I also like the fact that there's nothing on it's homepage and nothing under its aegis that you can't find if you're not looking for it. Yet I was watching the news on PBS tonight, and a story about Google informed me that the company archives searches under username and password, and there's a possibility that everything you search could be...somewhere.
The third item I heard on NPR this evening. The story was about how the virtual economy of Internet games such as "Everquest" and "World of Warcraft" has seeped into the real economy, so that gamers can purchase virtual gold from other gamers, via ebay and the like. So, for say, thirty US dollars, you could buy enough gold to purchase that new magic sword you've had your eye on. To earn this money in the game, it could take hundreds of hours, in which you may have to weather attacks from all manner of mystical beasts. There aren't hard numbers on how much real money is spent on this, but the expert in the story put the figure at 200 million USD annually. Those within the industry claim it's a billion. He also suggested that someone could employ people in parts of Asia or Eastern Europe, pay them a dollar an hour to earn the virtual booty and then sell it and keep the real spoils.
I would argue that the net should be totally unregulated, and free of charge: an open source for information and commerce. Yet we've managed to let it's most popular ports become reflections of some of the most depressing aspects of our society: unfair labor, surveillance, celebrity trash. The price we pay is that there’s nothing we can do about it.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5032947
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/
http://entertainment.tv.yahoo.com/entnews/eo/20051130/113340564000.html
2 comments:
Solid post McStiles. I read an article a couple weeks back saying something to the same effect regarding online money. In this article, however, someone had purchased virtual property for a couple hundred grand. The purchaser bought a level of a game like everquest, in which he gets to put his own demons and monsters and stuff. When players come to his level of the game, everything they kill he keeps a cut of. Thus, like a gambling house, he wins no matter what. Pretty insane, especially considering he had financed the sale from selling online gold for real money over ebay.
An encouraging thought. Last night it occurred to me that enternet blogs and the like are the new printing press. Consider that in a couple hundred years, scholars not too different from Maxime Shrayer will be looking back at old blogs as scholarly works and cultural reflections. I doubt mine will be selected for high reading - I will always be the Marlowe to your Shakespear. But regardless, when you consider the importance of links, and pictures, and other features of a blog, it is a pretty facinating new medium.
Regards
FD
We've got Shakespeare and Marlowe here; I'm just worried about those searches that Google archives.
You may be able to elect what variety of trite news you wish to forget in 30 seconds. I prefer sports, since it never hides under the auspices of being meaningful. And it goes well with my morning beer.
Post a Comment