Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Is there a point to the web?
Every time I make my way into cyberspace to trawl for interesting news, the words of recently deceased Kurt Vonnegut, American novelist and social critic, come to mind. Vonnegut nobly stated: “We are here on earth to fart around.” His words ring true when it comes to the Internet. The Internet is, of course, a source of vast information, but it is also a time waster and source of junk par excellence. Needless to say, I find it irresistible.
The most recent Internet toy I came across is Google Zeitgeist. This tool highlights the so-called “the spirit of time” by retrieving information about what people are searching for on the Internet. It is meant to provide a snapshot of a past week, month, or year. Google Zeitgeist excludes generic searches such as ‘ebay’, ‘dictionary’, ‘yellow pages’, ‘games’, ‘maps’ and X-rated keywords, drawing out trends and topics that are obsessing net users.
In 2006, for example, it noted that Bebo, My Space, and World Cup were the top three Zeitgeist movers. This highlights how, particularly among the young and restless largely in the Western world, social networking on sites, such as Bebo and My Space, made a major impact on the Internet that year. The soccer World Cup also sucked up hours of Internet (not to mention TV) time.
More recently, Google Zeitgeist introduced a facility to track trends in different countries. A quick review of top queries for March 2007 is revealing.
The five top queries gaining the most growth in South Africa were medicine, a porn site that slipped through the Net that I won’t mention, Martin Luther King, Christianity and Starbucks. In the UK, they were PSP games, Johnny Depp, PC World, Audi A3 and British Telecom. In Ireland, the top four searches were tourism and health service-related. Number five was slownik angielsko polski, which I think is an online Polish-English dictionary or, alternatively, I just inadvertently advertised a Polish porn site.
Does this tell us anything? To some degree it highlights where different societies are at. The Internet in the UK is largely a tool for shopping, gaming and celebrity gossip, and is clearly used a lot by young people. This is made possible because over 60% of people have access to the Internet at home, and broadband speeds are high. In Ireland, Google Zeitgeist provides evidence of a growing Polish population.
In South Africa, the picture is less clear. Seemingly, the Internet, which is only used by 10% of South Africans regularly, is a growing source of medical advice, but also a place of contradiction. It currently appears to be oscillating between porn seekers, Christians, or those in search of non-violent political action or a cup of coffee.
Worse still, South Africans could be searching for the five categories simultaneously. Could this mean the average Internet user in South Africa, at least in March 2007, is an ailing perverted activist Christian who needs coffee to keep himself or herself awake to engage in wicked habits?
But before you write to complain about my provocative analysis, the South African trends could also suggest that South African activists, inspired by Martin Luther King, are considering a mass protest against Starbucks. Or Christians are trying to head pornographers off at the proverbial moral pass. Conversely, coffee is the source of all evil.
Then again, in Vonnegut’s words, it could just be evidence that indeed we are here to fart around and cumulatively it all means squat. So what does that tell us?
Well, if you have read this far, it is yet more evidence that baiting a reader with useless information is easy, no matter how inane. It is no wonder the Internet is filled with garbage. We love it. So why did the chicken cross the information superhighway? Sadly, the evidence suggests it was simply to get to the other site.
Brandon Hamber writes the column "Look South": an analysis of trends in global political, social and cultural life and its relevance to South Africa on Polity. Copyright Brandon Hamber, May 2007. "Look South" Column published on Polity on 4 May 2007.Labels: Internet, Look South .....
How to be a politically-correct slacker
If there is one thing I hate, it is chain emails, or chain letters, as they used to be known before the advent of computers. Most of you are familiar with them. You receive an unsolicited email or letter promising to make a wish come true, or prevent you from suffering some nasty fate, such as the sky falling on your head, if you forward the said correspondence to 50 people within six minutes. There are many reasons to despise such letters; notably, they are a waste of time and a sure way to lose friends, if you forward them. But more than anything, it is the emotional manipulation at the core of them that is sometimes steeped in political correctness that bothers me most. Take, for example, one such email I received recently. It went something like this: a poor boy is starving in Africa – he has no family, livestock or limbs, and each time you forward this email, Bill Gates will personally give the boy $1 and good luck will shine on you all your days. If you do not forward this letter, you will be struck down with some horrible disease, just like Joe, from Kansas, who was diagnosed with bubonic plague only hours after refusing to send this letter on. Worse still, the limbless boy, who has no chickens to call his own and is a victim of capitalism, will surely die.
Okay, I exaggerate slightly, but the message is clear. The harbingers of this rubbish play on people’s goodwill and guilt, presumably for no other reason than to see how long the letter takes to get back to them. But such letters also suck you in and I too have succumbed to the odd email promising the end to world hunger at the press of a button. So why do they work? One answer is that they promote ‘slacktivism’, a term derived from merging the words ‘slacker’ and ‘activism. Slacktivism, according to Barbara Mikkelson, cofounder of Snopes.com, a website that debunks urban legends, “is the search for the ultimate feel-good that derives from having come to society’s rescue without actually getting one’s hands dirty, volunteering any of one’s time, or opening one’s wallet”. In other words, getting a big return on a small investment. Consequently, these goodwill emails (laden with threats) keep trundling on for the same reason as pyramid schemes: we want something for nothing and to have the added benefit of feeling good about getting it.
There are, however, different levels of slacktivism. There are those who are serial slacktivists, that is, they sign and forward any old petition blissfully unaware that most governments or corporations will just ignore unverified correspondence. The only beneficiary is the sender, who is left with a warm glow for his or her self-righteous, yet minimal, efforts. Then there are also those who use the Internet and chain emails to drum up support for their cause, which is translated into genuine lobbying in the halls of government. A constant barrage of information, which is factual rather than threatening and based on genuine case studies, could arguably swing public opinion. But to achieve this, the garbage that is circulated on the Internet should be filtered, and this starts with you and me. I am all for a little slacktivism, but it should move beyond simply forwarding heart-wrenching emails. Let’s think before forwarding every email and use the time we spend worrying that bad luck will befall us if we don’t, as well as the time wasted congratulating ourselves on the five seconds we donated to a good cause while pressing the forward button, being a lot more selective and a little more action-oriented. And, if any of you needs lessons on just how to do this, just drop me an email and we can go for a cappuccino and discuss it.
Brandon Hamber writes the column "Look South": an analysis of trends in global political, social and cultural life and its relevance to South Africa on Polity. Copyright Brandon Hamber, February 2006. "Look South" Column published on Polity on 3 March 2006.Labels: Internet, Look South, Political Correctness .....
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