It’s been only 10 years since the first browsers (Mozilla & then Netscape) were widely distributed, making the internet readily accessible to average computer users. Immediately, early adoptees, futurists, & pundits announced wild possibilities for a radical social realignment. They declared that, like Rocky Balboa, the little guy had a shot at the title; the internet leveled the playing field; epolitics was naturally democratic (maybe even socialist). They made any number of cliché-ridden declarations. For those who espoused a revolutionary politics or preached a liberation theology, the appeal of the internet, or at least the idea of the internet, was obvious. But the response was more pragmatic—thousands of garage bands cut demo tracks, ripped mp3’s, and posted them on sites like mp3.com (at least in its early iteration), fully expecting that lucrative recording contracts were inevitable once the moguls at BMG and EMI downloaded the demos and “discovered” them. The internet provided the same promise to graphic designers, animators, writers, poets, & video editors.
Not surprisingly, few realized their aspirations. The odds of being “discovered” are in the same order as the odds of winning a lottery. And like a lottery, there is a direct correlation between those who succeed online, and those who win lotteries—their winnings come at the expense of those who fail.There are two principal barriers to recognition online: 1) the sheer volume of others vying for recognition; & 2) the problem of directing others to your own site, your product. The first problem is answered by the critic who undertakes the daunting task of sifting through vast cultural output in search of those items worthy of wider consideration. The critic is, at least superficially, a time-saving device. The second problem is answered by the marketing consultant who undertakes not simply to direct people to a site, but also to arrange that those most likely to purchase are the very people most likely to browse through a site. But those most successful online have achieved their success not merely because they have answered these two problems, but more importantly, because their products and services have served others in answering these two problems.
Amazon.com is a critical clearing house. Not only does it allow customers to purchase its product, but also, it assists the customer in the task of sifting through its vast catalogue by providing reviews and recommendations. Particularly clever is the fact that it enlists its customers to provide this service. Anyone can log on and write a book review. But if, as early pundits foretold, the internet would level the playing field, how did it come to pass that the little guy was duped into providing uncompensated labour for large corporations? If anything, the internet has ensured that the little guy get even smaller.
Google.com facilitates online marketing. If you search keywords, then its search engine returns results based upon an algorithm designed to assess a site’s “importance.” Relevance is, well, irrelevant. Google determines “importance” by the number of links to a site, and by the importance of the linking sites. And so it follows, paradoxically, that the only way to become an “important” site is to be an “important” site, much like the old adage about the rich getting richer. If you consistently achieve a high ranking on a Google search, then this enhances the likelihood that your site will be linked to other sites. If your site never gets ranked, then not even the most intrepid surfer will discover it (and, more importantly, link it to their site), ensuring that your site will continue to be “unimportant.” How did it come to pass that factors such as merit and content are devalued in favour of popularity? If anything, the internet has ensured that the little guy be overwhelmed by the trivial.
In less than 10 years, Amazon.com has become the largest book seller in the world, and Google.com has become a media conglomerate larger than AOL Time/Warner.
There is a moral to this story. As the student of revolutionary politics well knows, and as the liberation theologian has cautioned for years, when we empower people to rise up from the underside of life, there is an enormous temptation to retain that power—like the lottery winner who moves to a gated community so he can avoid the awkward stares from all his buddies he left behind on the assembly line.
From this discussion, an obvious question comes to mind: why do I bother to post my rants to this web site? What possible expectation do I have of an audience? If participation has been thwarted by those who ventured first onto the scene and seized their advantage, then why participate? One possible answer is that I am greedy. I continue to hope, like the millions of others like me, that I’ll be “discovered,” make a name for myself, strike it rich. Maybe. However, like the diarist, I would probably do this without the prospect of even a single reader. The simple act of setting things down in words imposes a discipline on one’s thinking that yields other rewards. Even so, the question remains, why set things down in words by posting them to a publicly accessible server? Would I not enjoy the same rewards by confining my words to my hard drive? Maybe. Even so, there is something to be said for participation.
My grandfather once told me how his grandfather, as a not-so-young man, ventured from his home on the St. John river to join the gold rush in Australia back in the 1850’s. When he left, he traveled eastward across the Atlantic. Years later, when he returned, he came from the Pacific coast, the only man from his community who had ever traveled around the world. He never struck it rich. In fact, he returned home dirt poor. Nevertheless, in the estimation of those who knew him in later years, he had been enriched beyond all measure. Who knows? Maybe one day I will have grandchildren who tell tales about how their grandfather was one of that group of people, the first ever to buy a Macintosh computer, to register a domain name, to snatch music with napster, to capture video and stream it online. They’ll tell how it was a free-for-all back in the heady days before the turn of the millennium. They’ll tell how their grandfather was right there, in the middle of it, when all these amazing things happened. So why do I bother? To be in the middle of it all I suppose.