{"id":531,"date":"2020-07-03T11:48:31","date_gmt":"2020-07-03T18:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/?p=531"},"modified":"2020-07-03T11:48:31","modified_gmt":"2020-07-03T18:48:31","slug":"on-the-internets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/2020\/07\/03\/on-the-internets\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Internet(s)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I sometimes think I expect too much. I’m reading McSweeney’s 54: The End of Trust<\/a><\/em>, and thinking of my early (early 1990s) ideals around the Internet and personal computing, which were both evolving so rapidly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Confession: I thought that everyone I knew would be doing AMAZING THINGS with this technology, especially once software and hardware evolved for key activities like music composition, video editing, digital painting, and more.<\/span><\/em> I was certain that everyone I knew had a hidden composer\/filmmaker\/author\/artist in them just WAITING to get out.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But… it’s 2020, and most people I know use this truly amazing content creation\/sharing infrastructure <\/strong>to: post photos of their (purchased meals), post photos of themself drunk, make their children self-conscious by “sharenting” (oversharing as parents), repost unreliable information found on unreliable source pages of dubious origin, or watch (and repost) cat videos.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

*me staring at the reader with alarmed expression*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, there is some nice citizen science stuff, and the libraries are doing a great job, but I EXPECTED that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, really, I didn’t expect [gestures toward the screen] this<\/strong>. I thought tech would revolutionize education and communication and film and science in ways that… HAVE NOT HAPPENED. I did not anticipate “social media” where people talk about themselves endlessly, and misrepresent how they look and live to their “friends.” I was not cynical enough to envision paid “influencers” peddling products. I would not have anticipated the web being used to hype imaginary events like the Fyre Festival. I did not think so many people had an inner scam compulsion and\/or marketing ambition and\/or cat obsession to resolve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I… feel like such a wacky optimist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ANYWAY, the End of Trust<\/em> is really good, and I can tell because I am using up tape flags over things I want to dwell on further. It’s a great sign. I’ll write about it, of course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I sometimes think I expect too much. I’m reading McSweeney’s 54: The End of Trust, and thinking of my early (early 1990s) ideals around the Internet and personal computing, which were both evolving so rapidly. Confession: I thought that everyone I knew would be doing AMAZING THINGS with this technology, especially once software and hardware … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “On the Internet(s)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[105],"class_list":["post-531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-internet"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":532,"href":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions\/532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teahousehome.com\/booksandcoffee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}