Credo: User Generated Content

In which I opine on the nature of politics and Teh Internets.

The dining room table is festooned with the remains of a week’s activity. No matter what we try to do, the table becomes a repository for our lives. School work, my work, mail, sheet music…it’s all here. I’m seated at the table now while drinking my coffee and listening to the neighborhood slowly awaken.

I need to return my library book. It too is on the dinning room table beneath a hymnal I was using.

I’m examining my anxiety this morning. It’s not serving any purpose. I’m simply subject to the winds of political upheaval, the drama of the Presidential race, and the local issues of the City of Richmond and the surrounding suburbs. Troubles abound. But so do small victories.

I have been rereading David Weinberger’s work. He writes:

“The Internet’s abundant capacity has removed the old artificial constraints on publishing—including getting our content checked and verified. The new strategy of publishing everything we find out thus results in an immense cloud of data, free of theory, published before verified, and available to anyone with an Internet connection. And this is changing the role that facts have played as the foundation of knowledge.”

How we know and what we believe is changing. Fast. Again.

I do not think our democracy is safe. It is a fragile system that depends on truthful actors to make it work well. In recent decades we have forgone truth and exchanged it for entertainment. We’d rather be titillated than informed. Though there are some media outlets reporting the news as it happens, most of us tune into the entertainment. Our commentaries blare from our television sets, tablets, smartphones, and car radios twenty-four hours a day. Again, this is a choice we have made.

Weinberger again:

“Transform the medium by which we develop, preserve, and communicate knowledge, and we transform knowledge.”

That’s a sobering thought. Algorithmic thinking has transformed knowledge. AI is transforming knowledge. We are in an epistemological crisis.

How do you tune it out? Do you simply ignore it? Do you let the Algorithm decide for you?

While speaking with a friend lately we remembered the days of “user generated content.” Do you remember the halcyon days of Teh Interwebs when human beings drove online content and it served as a bulwark against the insanity? I think it lasted for a week in 2004, but it did happen.

I still believe in it. I still believe that we can, in our own small ways, steer this ship. Even as Big Social becomes more dependent upon AI generated content, we still have a choice. We can choose the color and timbre of what happens online…even of what is reported in the news. We still choose what we consume. We still choose what we produce.

Here’s a little more Weinberger.

“Our task is to learn how to build smart rooms—that is, how to build networks that make us smarter, especially since, when done badly, networks can make us distressingly stupider.”

Democracy is not yet dead.

Democracy does, however, depend upon us to participate for it to thrive. It depends upon our own sincerity. It depends upon our own optimism. It depends upon hope.

I don’t usually write about politics. I’m a left-of-Jesus socialist sort, however, and am passionate about civil society and how we live together as municipalities in the context of a nation.

To engage the ills of the larger society creatively, we must act locally.

Don’t get me wrong. I reach out to my Federal level representatives. I vote. Yes, I will vote for Harris. That’s no great secret. I will do what I can to push my local Council representative to the political left hoping that will drive our national politics as well.

Public transportation. Good schools. Robust health care for all. Clean water. Racial healing. These are all issues that Richmond is wrangling with right now. Oh, and a tax structure that doesn’t punish small businesses would be nice.

I wish to be part of a nation that thrives. And, while many argue that Western Civilization is in free fall, I still believe we can care for one another with the tools of fair government, truthful media, and the occasional post online.

Democracy is founded upon user generated content. We still have influence. We still have voice. I still have hope.

Y’all be excellent to each other.

The quotations from David Weinberger were taken from Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room is the Room.