Web 2.0: Overhyped

“The ‘Great Man’ theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that ‘the history of the world is but the biography of great men.’ He believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species. That theory took a serious beating this year.”

That was the first paragraph of Time Magazine’s Person of the Year cover story. Who had it named Person of the Year 2006? None other than: you. That’s right. You. The cover of the print edition actually featured a computer screen with reflective foil that was supposed to show the reader himself, that’s “you”, as the Person of the Year.

First off, great job Time, clap clap. What an original idea, making every individual the Person of the Year. We should all be proud of ourselves for having done so much to help the world. I may not have risked life and limb to work in the poorest parts of Africa or Southeast Asia or inspired millions with my selfless acts of charity or maintained composure in the face of extreme hardship to make the right decisions that people generations from now will benefit from, but taking out the trash this morning sure was tough and I’m glad somebody recognized my effort. (Translation: This is Time’s biggest cop-out ever.)

Of course, what Time is really trying to say, and it makes this clear in the article, is that thanks to the development of so-called Web 2.0 and the emergence and explosive growth of its components – YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, Blogger, etc. – simple, ordinary, everyday people like you and me have a way of putting up our own material and make it big on our own, without the help of expensive, bulky production teams or reporting staffs. Basically, everybody’s a producer/star/reporter/photographer now.

Time is terribly wrong on two counts.

Firstly, Carlyle’s “Great Man” theory still holds stronger than ever and is in fact reinforced by what’s been happening over the past couple years. Take YouTube for example. All right, sure, now with YouTube anybody with a half decent digital camera and a computer can become America’s next big star with virtually zero production cost (unless, as is often the case, you count shame and loss of dignity). But how did YouTube get there in the first place? It was thanks to three guys in Silicon Valley that this all became possible. Without them, YouTube wouldn’t exist and neither would all these so-called stars of the Internet. So the “Great Man” theory still holds because in this case, the great men are Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, the founders of YouTube and not the users of YouTube in much the same way we all see Julius Caesar as the classical “great man” which is something very different from the Roman citizens, who though obviously still crucial to the success of the Roman Empire were merely actors in a system innovated and pioneered by a leader. Sorry lonelygirl15, you were just a poster girl for the real star that was YouTube. History has and always will be written by the leaders and innovators, not the mindless masses. It is important not to get confused like Time did and mistaken the product for the maker.

Secondly, who says all this Web 2.0 stuff is all that great? I’m going to have to direct the bulk of this attack at YouTube again. So, great, anybody can make a movie and post it online for free. What makes anyone think the quality of these homemade videos is going to be great or even mediocre? For the most part, you get junk and it now comes in by the truckload. Now as if there aren’t enough computer-related things for people to waste their time on – computer games, Facebook, watching cheesy animations, etc. – we’ve got another fantastic time-waster: watching terribly made movies with little to no value in almost every single way except as cheap, mind-numbing entertainment. But then again what do you expect from a citizenry so hopelessly addicted to other forms of useless, mind-numbing entertainment like celebrity gossip, reality TV shows, etc.?

In a way, this goes back to my article titled “The Common Man in an Uncommon World.” The whole world is rushing forward; new technologies are being discovered all the time. Scientists, innovators, entrepreneurs are leading the way for the progress of the entire species. But what happens when you give these innovations to the masses? They’re wasted by the moronic and all we can do is be grateful that they at least don’t/can’t turn these innovations into weapons (the IPR issues though are getting seriously out of hand) and only end up changing themselves from coach potatoes to computer zombies.

But let me clarify what I really mean about this whole supposed Internet revolution. I think that overall, it is a good thing. It’s great that we now have the option to watch something other than junk TV shows and special effects-saturated movies. Of course, we now watch junk YouTube videos instead for the most part, but now there’s also room for those few who are dedicated enough to produce something worthwhile but just couldn’t get it past the silicon-enhanced gatekeepers of Hollywood. My point is that there could be some really good benefits to all of this but we shouldn’t hype it up so much until we really start to see good quality products emerge. In the meantime, we’re still stuck with millions of ways to waste our lives and sink into the philistine filth of mass culture now no longer in the hands of big name producers and marketing gurus but nevertheless still mass culture.