The day of the metameme

So, now everybody seems to be talking about memes, the once obscure online concept only nerds knew about. Turns out the whole meme idea is becoming a meme in sociologist circles. And there is indeed a lot of fascinating data to be collected in the internets (all of them) since it serves as a nice probe into vox populi.

Is internet getting dumber? Lets see. It seems a somewhat unfair question to ask, but consider this; ten years ago, far fewer people had access to internet. Internet at home was rather rare, but most universities had a connection. As a result, the vast majority of internauts where college students and faculty members. And the content online reflected this—nerds have a tendency to be smart.

So, is internet getting dumber? Well, yes. But that is only because it is becoming a more accurate portrait of mankind. Now you don’t need to be a computational engineering undergrad to have internet access. Actually, the advent of friendly interfaces came to mean that you actually need very little education to be able to use internet, if you can read and write (if you can barely read and write) you are good to go.

Most people are not highly educated nor highly respectful. Internet content is reflecting that. Now, I don’t want to sound “back in my day, we wrote laughing out loud, walked ten miles in the snow to get to school and we respected our elders”. I enjoy internet as it is, and there is still a lot of incredibly smart people producing all sort of material. Its just that your average internet user is becoming more like your average human, and as technology keeps getting cheaper, this will increase.

This is a good thing. Alienation was a common result of spending too much time online, and we all know the kid who doesn’t socialize outside the forums because “people are dumb”. Well kid, though for you, people online are dumb too. But hey, at least you’ll have a blast at the con.

I got terribly out of track here. I meant to write about so-called Moore’s Law. Nah, maybe next time.

On school violence.

For what its worth, I send my condolences to all the people who lost someone loved in the Virginia Tech shooting. I can only imagine what you must be going through, and I know kind words do little to alleviate it. I hope you can find strength in this tragedy and that you are able to cope with the pain. The world is very sorry.

Yup.

I live. Still. More to come.


Really.