Maybe... “The Rise and Fall of Digital Anarchy.”

Apology in advance for my ramblin’…

Maybe Hindman’s book should be titled “The Rise and Fall of Digital Anarchy.”

The first time I read the reading assignment, chapters three and four, I shared some of my fellow classmates’ sentiment about the statistical references and the analytical stuff.  It was kinda “painful.”  I was kind of turned me off by the stats and numbers until we had the review of the chapters in class and then things started to make sense.  It also helps the second time that I start the reading from the beginning.

The development of the Internet and the other information super highways on the World Wide Web is definitely a new frontier for many mediums and in many ways changed people’s way of accessing information.  Hindman was right about certain things like the Internet made politic less exclusive and have definitely broken the monopoly of the three major television networks. Hindman is not kidding when he said anyone with a basic personal computer and an Internet connection can literally become the Captain Kirk of the USS Lazy Boy where we can seek out new websites, click on unknown hyperlinks, and download music and pornography at optical light speed at the click of a mouse. 

It’s amazing what a single person armed with a Smartphone or a personal digital device can do to politicians or certain organization(s) while they’re still in there pajamas.  These individuals are like a single cell parasite working independently in this matrix called the Internet or the World Wide Web where they can summons the likes of them,  other bloggers, twitterers or anyone who are linked to these user and surfer to spread their Mojo to do their things like cellular multiplication to reach millions in almost warp speed via digital network connected with fiber optical cables.  They can spread information may it be fact or fiction to upset financial stabilities or cause nations to change governments like “Arab Spring.”

Even the highly respectable news anchors worries about their jobs security because how people are getting their news and how fast and wide the information can be transmitted.  Take facebook and or twitter for instance, the crack cocaine of social media, as I am typing this blog I am receiving hits after hits from other facebook’s so called “friends” and “share” “friends” in the news media from the PAC RIM to my Military buddies with news flashes that reaches me before CNN does from their locate cable news in NYC. It’s amazing that I can repost these news flashes back on my wall sometimes almost two hours before the local news agencies on facebook does? 

I can understand the “Democratization” of the Internet, but is it truly a democracy or more like anarchy?  Take the long tail effect of who’s doing what and where they lie on the curve of users and surfers.  Yes, we know what the IT and the IS technocrats and the social and political scientists of academia can formulate or conduct researches to spit out “crunched” numbers and statistic to charts and demonstrate how the Internet and the users are interacting.  In reality, these statistic, charts and graphs are really bullshit because ALL statistics are skewed or tailored by the people who copulates the data to suit the needs, just the census we poll every ten years.  The Internet and cyber space in many ways is like the real world that still has many uncharted territories with many sites operating like most brick and mortar shops.  Like the real world these sites are not always appears to be and information from these sites are not always true or accurate.  We can only study and research what we know or have access to, but in the real world, we also have the underworld, the criminals and their enterprises, and the corrupt.  Well, these demographic are also living and breeding in the World Wide Web conducting business and making more money and harder to trace because they also enlisted their own techno savvy criminals to protect their businesses, their where about and their assets.  

Then we have people in the US that falls on the other side of the under 100 IQ curve that not many people at the other side of the over 100 get to deal with on a daily basis.  Interestingly, I’m one of the reluctant ones that get to engage with people on a daily bases who does nothing but watch shit like Jerry Springer, Maury and other trash cable and online entertainment.  This demographic is a strange group yet somehow they have a place in the high end market and in the Hip-Hop industry.  They are alive and breeding because the ways these “Hood Rats” “Ghetto Thugs’ and “baby mamma dramas” surf the sites they visits.  This is why the high end goods industries started to place “ghetto down” ads on these sites visited the people from “da Hood.”  

At first, many social scientists look at this digital divide thing thinking that people from the underclass and people living in ethnic enclaves have technical challenges with personal computers or navigating the Internet. They are not as digitally divided as many social scientists think they are. The way these people in the lower socio-economic communities live their lives carries their behavior over onto the internet. These folks web surfing patterns to cautioned sites like they practice blatant unprotected sex. Many if not all are constantly crashing their PC with TONS of adware, malware and viruses. They thumbed their texts and twitters like a fool holding a gun with a nervous itchy finger on a hair-trigger.  They don’t understand like a gun, once you hit “Enter,” you’re done.  Enough of rambling on the users that travels on the dark side of the Internet!  Working in the South Bronx observing the locals and reviewing their cookies to study their online behavior is a study by itself.  To see what they do, how they search and why they do what they do, and like have they out navigate the staffs at Public Assistance, their internet behavior is the SAME!!! AARRRH!

This is one area where social and political scientists would avoid at all cost because they sure as hell don’t know to look like a fool in front of their peer review to prove or test their theories. 

Although some of the charts and tables in Hindman’s text are outdated being MySpace is no longer the hottest social media since replaced by facebook.  Nevertheless, the same users from MySpace are now on facebook doing the same shit, try to hook up and “friend” anyone and everyone to see who’s who and doing with who’s what to catch up on the latest trend like the telephone carrier commercial like Verizon’s “that was so 30 seconds ago.”

It’s truly an experience to see the how 100 below IQ groups behavior and to see where they go in the Wild Wild Web. It’s not just “Shorty” hunting and ripping Hip Hop music.  The demographic where the social and economic challenges manage to find themselves in many strange places because they have a different search pattern due to the social mind set and their education background. 

I see the Internet as the Wild Wild West of the new frontier but with the same characters.  The train stations with the telegram house banging out Morse code(the physical layer), the General Store with all the goodies and the latest things (Google), the town Saloon where you can play poker, grab a meal and meet lovely and seedy ladies (Craigslist), the town bank (ATM & PayPal) and the sheriff in town (FCC).  And if you include the natives, that would be the malware, spyware that you need a firewall to keep them out.

The Internet and the World Wide Web is expanding exponentially like spiders on steroids. Well, actually it’s more like Cisco and the ISP in cahoots doing their dos and breaking barriers to go places technically uncharted while trying to stretch the legal boundary of the FCC.  Just like the crap we have on cable TV we cater to the diverse population, the Internet is doing the same thing without restrictions. It’s sad to say that more people are watching crap like Jerry Springer and cheaply made reality shows than PBS, or other well written shows on BBC.  For every Martha Stewart wannabes searching homes and gardens, there’s just as much stoners Cheech and Chong wannabes searching a high tech hydroponic system to grow their weed.  

The Internet kinda reminds me of this horrible Sylvester Stallone movie with Sandra Bullock called “The Demolition Man” where the plot is in the future in Los Angeles, governed by an intellect with an evil twist that controls the society and politics above ground while there are these underground rebels, literally living underneath the city because they refused to buy into this perfect and controlled society.  We have the technocrats and the academia trying to put their footprints on the internet or set the rules or act as the gatekeepers while there are people who see these people are no different than big government and want nothing to do with their rules and do whatever they want on the World Wide Web. Why not?!?! Why pay if I can get it for free? 

I’m sure there are rebel technocrats like me out there who once worked for the system and wants nothing more than to “stick it to the man” and find other means to search information and eventually break away from the normal search engine…it’s whole new world out there. Nomadic technology, voice interact technology, soon we’re gonna be able to “Jacked in.” It’s not impossible.