geekhack
geekhack Community => Off Topic => Topic started by: captain on Mon, 19 March 2012, 13:21:12
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I came across this quote today:
"The idea of capturing the intelligence of the readership -- that's a joke."
-- Nick Denton, Gawker Media founder, on how the promise of interaction and discussion on the Internet has failed. Denton was speaking at South by Southwest Interactive 2012. http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/11/tech/web/online-comments-sxsw/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Do we belie this hypothesis here at geekhack, or live down to it?
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These days where everyone and their dog, cat, hamster and parakeet are on the web, sites with content attracting intelligent people are likely to receive smarter comments than those targeted at average Joe. Simple as that. (As such, GH should fare better than average.) All-day life has moved onto the net, complete with everything associated with it - things like war not excepted.
The "old" idealistic internet is not dead at all, it's merely diluted in a sea of noise. So many of the things that are trendy nowadays promote a near-zero attention span and no attention to detail. The latest memes, tweets and Facebook updates may be fun, but let's be honest, the vast majority of it is just useless clutter that is wasting your time. When people are taking their time, they can end up with some pretty amazing hobby projects that make you wonder how much effort may have gone into them. (Not to mention some of the greatest inventions and discoveries of the last century or two.) You have to wonder whether a wider exposure of such things on the net really makes up for generally reduced attention spans.
That being said, the net greatly increases the visibility of things. We may not actually have become any less smart, but if any idiot can post on there, it'll show. It's the same as with the apparent flood of music we are experiencing - there aren't any more musicians than a few decades ago, their output has merely become a lot more easily accessible.
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Today is Monday, the 6775rd of September, 1993.
And Gawker is the company who, upon learning that its user account database had been compromised, didn't consider it a problem because it was “Just the peasants” who had had their passwords stolen. It shouldn't be difficult to see why intelligent people are not anxious to sign up to comment on their sites.
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Hurrrduurrrrr keyboards hurrduurrr keys
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I didn't read your post, but the answer to the thread title is no.
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Yes. Without intelligence, there would be no wiki, no ripster, no me, no you and possible nothing at all. Like keyb_gr said, nowadays anything and everything is on the internet which accounts for all the noise.
I know the internet is also filled with terrible things but somethings we also need to see the positive side such as human cloud computing. With human cloud computing, the internet is bursting with creativity and solution. It whether one can utilize/harness such energy is another thing all together.
The Government and people in power are clearly afraid of such dangerously uncontrollable power that they often try to suppress it by always telling people about the negativity of the internet.
The internet is basically a wild card. Make of it what you will and move on.
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Meanwhile in Ripster's subforum...
[ATTACH=CONFIG]44987[/ATTACH]
At least SOMEONE is having fun over there! :D
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Case. In. Two posts. :-(