Pessimism about the Web runs on the surface.
Optimism about it draws deep.
All the bad things we hear about the Web are true.
There really are people online who'd like to lure
our children into shadows. There really are
hucksters who'll steal not only your money but your
identity. There really are people who'll take
pictures of you in a public bathroom and publish
the pictures to the world. Every human vice we can
imagine finds its way onto the Web, which seems to
spur the world's most lurid imaginations even
further. But the reason for this should be a cause
for optimism.
Telephones merely gave us obscene calls, investment
scams and mealtime interruptions by long distance
companies. TV has brought us "adult" channels and
the glorification of stupidity. But the Web's range
of vices is as broad as that of our species. Why?
Because the Web isn't a medium; it's a world. A
medium conveys a message from Point A to Point B.
But on the Web, we're the ones that are moving, not
messages. The Web's semantics makes that clear: we
go to and leave pages, pages are sites or homes. The
Web provides a persistent public space for our
peregrinations. There's plenty of room for our vices
as well as our virtues: on the Web you will find
every human adjective and most of the interesting
verbs.
The Web is, of course, unlike any world we've
encountered. Because it's not physical, we can pop
into and out of it at will, without having to take a
life-threatening journey across an ocean each time.
And, unlike any world we've encountered, it is a
purely invented, space -- no messy outcroppings of
rock, impassable gorges, or forbidding deserts.
Everything you see was put there with other people
in mind.
Because there's no preexisting landscape to be
populated, when people build a web site, they also
put in links. That's what holds the Web together.
Without links, the Web would be simply an assemblage
of isolated hard drives; a page that contains no
links and has no other pages linked to it isn't
really a part of the Web. Yet, every link on every
page was put there because someone thought someone
else might be interested. The very space of the Web
is social. Its structure is a global refutation of
radical individualism and personal isolationism.
Within this space held together by the interest of
people in one another, the unscrupulous can prey.
But their sins are only possible because this is a
world premised not on indifference or entropy but on
love. (The proof of the pudding is in its abuse.)
And that is why optimism about the Web is deep -- so
deep that we should call it by its real name: Hope.
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The Author
David Weinberger writes JOHO and is one of the Ringleaders of cluetrain.com,
a manifesto of web ethics. He also provides strategic marketing
consulting to high-tech companies, writes for several magazines
(including Wired)
and is a commentator on NPR's "All Things Considered."
He was, as VP of Strategic Marketing, one of the shapers of Open
Text's intranet strategy. David sits on several conference boards
and is a member of AIIM's Emerging Technology Advisory Group. Reach
him at self@evident.com
.
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