I’ve been curious how cultural trends adjust our feelings toward various habits people have. The biggest change to me has been that of the hipster blogger, sitting in a coffee shop with their MacBook, doing some personal photo-journalism for the benefit of mankind. I think the common notion of what, and who, a writer is has changed dramatically. No longer is it necessarily someone cramped up in an attic, papers everywhere, a drink at hand; it can be anyone with just about any device. I’m sure there are people out there who write posts from their phone — I know I’ve at least edited a few posts from mine.
Of course, there is still some tongue-in-cheek (and I’m sure for some people, legitimate) ridicule for such endeavors. With so many people opening themselves up to the internet in this way, they are also opening themselves up to the critical eye of the internet populace. Many people wanting to blaze their own path end up falling into a broader statistic. But this isn’t new, nor what I want to focus on. Particularly because I’m writing this post in a Panera before I go to work this morning.
I want to focus on whether this development is good. Is the ability for people to have these platforms for themselves, to bombard more and more servers with their thoughts, photos, and any other media they wish a positive change in society? My initial reaction is yes, it is good. People are writing more, sharing their ideas, helping others out, and making their experiences known for others to learn from. Not only is it good for a society to voluntarily participate in efforts to make themselves more literate, it is also beneficial to have more information available to compare and make use of.
If I attempt to remove my optimist hat, I must acknowledge some of the legitimate gripes people have with this shift. Perhaps the biggest is the lack of credibility on the internet. Due to relative anonymity, people can claim what they want about themselves, and subsequently write what they want about the world from a perceived position of authority that is entirely undeserved. This is what we see in anti-vaccine movements, issues with climate change, and many other anti-science positions that flourish in certain corners of the internet. People with very little knowledge or background in a subject dishonestly post what they believe, framing it with the intent to make it come off as fact, especially to some particularly vulnerable people who roam the internet.
This extends to relatively innocuous aspects of thought. For my little corner of the internet, these people are largely crank mathematicians. Prior to the internet, amateur mathematicians would simply mail their ideas to professors, who could pretty quickly disregard anything that said “Trisect” or “Squaring a circle“. Now, many a young student gets drawn into arguments provided by people with insufficient background, wondering how it could possibly be that 0.999… is equal to 1, or why Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems don’t invalidate all of mathematics. I’m sure there are similar situations for just about any field of interest. For example, consider video creation and YouTube. That was quite the democratizing effort, and has provided amazing content. And some horrifying results.
I don’t wish to be so naive as to suggest that only people who “should” be talking about a particular subject can be allowed to. Ultimately the democratizing aspect of the free internet should win out. We can provide due diligence by educating people (particularly our parents who did not grow up with it) about how to properly navigate information on the internet, but beyond that I still firmly believe that having these platforms is good. Despite very few people reading this blog right now, I’m happy this opportunity exists. The same goes for podcasts. It is exciting to create the type of media you enjoy consuming.
While I still do not identify as a coffee shop blogger, and likely will never own a MacBook, I’m happy people can do it. More power to them.
