![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The world got so wide
Feb. 3rd, 2024 01:26 pmI am pondering, like many people more knowledgeable than me, the enshittification of the internet.
In my lifetime the world grew in ways that had hitherto been the provenance of science fiction. In my lifetime I could find information, people, connection, and conversation around the world at any moment. In my lifetime I could find products and services that I would never previously have heard of, could find organizations and social clubs that I never, ever would have imagined seeking out.
The world grew so very, very wide. I felt, for about fifteen years, that some part of me was always touching something live, powerful, and full of human promise.
That's changing. That's changed.
The wide, wide world of information is being poisoned. It is not accurate, reliable, or dependably real.
I am pondering how we all did this Before. How did we find things Before? How did we find people? How did we find groups? How did we find businesses? How did we learn, review, assess, and judge the information we were receiving about the world and the things in it?
We used to have Authoritative Tomes. The Encyclopedia. World Books. The Phone Book.
All of those things still exist, yes, but they mostly exist online where they can be poisoned. And the ones that resist the poison have been or are being killed - bought, strip-mined, and their corpse replaced on the internet full of poison.
I am turning slowly back to word of mouth.
My world is getting smaller, smaller again, in many ways. And I forsee it continuing on that trajectory. I ask friends and family what ad-blocker they are using. I ask friends for product recommendations. I ask the neighborhood list (which is NOT poisoned and is heavily monitored to keep ads and such out) for service and repair recommendations. I can't really go look at reviews, not any more. (I mean, I COULD, yes, but that's hours of my life trying to figure out whether something is even real, let alone whether it works as I want it to.)
It's a very weird thing to be living through.
I think of the people in the Jazz Age, the bright things with lives full of promise, with the future bright in front of them -- and then the Great Depression.
My world is still larger than it ever has been in some ways. But the seas we swim in are choked with poison, and I spend my time now rafting from land to land.
The world got so wide.
I miss it.
In my lifetime the world grew in ways that had hitherto been the provenance of science fiction. In my lifetime I could find information, people, connection, and conversation around the world at any moment. In my lifetime I could find products and services that I would never previously have heard of, could find organizations and social clubs that I never, ever would have imagined seeking out.
The world grew so very, very wide. I felt, for about fifteen years, that some part of me was always touching something live, powerful, and full of human promise.
That's changing. That's changed.
The wide, wide world of information is being poisoned. It is not accurate, reliable, or dependably real.
I am pondering how we all did this Before. How did we find things Before? How did we find people? How did we find groups? How did we find businesses? How did we learn, review, assess, and judge the information we were receiving about the world and the things in it?
We used to have Authoritative Tomes. The Encyclopedia. World Books. The Phone Book.
All of those things still exist, yes, but they mostly exist online where they can be poisoned. And the ones that resist the poison have been or are being killed - bought, strip-mined, and their corpse replaced on the internet full of poison.
I am turning slowly back to word of mouth.
My world is getting smaller, smaller again, in many ways. And I forsee it continuing on that trajectory. I ask friends and family what ad-blocker they are using. I ask friends for product recommendations. I ask the neighborhood list (which is NOT poisoned and is heavily monitored to keep ads and such out) for service and repair recommendations. I can't really go look at reviews, not any more. (I mean, I COULD, yes, but that's hours of my life trying to figure out whether something is even real, let alone whether it works as I want it to.)
It's a very weird thing to be living through.
I think of the people in the Jazz Age, the bright things with lives full of promise, with the future bright in front of them -- and then the Great Depression.
My world is still larger than it ever has been in some ways. But the seas we swim in are choked with poison, and I spend my time now rafting from land to land.
The world got so wide.
I miss it.