“I should tell you,” Kirkpatrick quickly put in, “I hate this Facebook revolution stuff.” Asked why, he said that “you can sit at your computer all day long and you’re never going to get anything done in terms of bringing down a government.” What caused the change in the Mideast, he said, was people going into the streets. While Facebook and Twitter are an advance over the old tools of putting up a flier or passing out a pamphlet, he said, “to put the technology in the forefront and not the individuals really misses the point.” Such labeling is unpopular in the Mideast, Kirkpatrick added, because it’s seen as an attempt to put a “Western brand name” on the event.
In the United States, meanwhile, the press, while writing endlessly about the Internet, has failed to examine some important questions about it. Much has been said about the democratizing effect of the Web, but how real is that effect? Has the Web delivered on its promise to empower ordinary citizens and give a voice to those who don’t own a printing press? It hardly seems so. It’s been roughly 20 years since the Web began to emerge as a significant presence in America, and over that period the country has grown much more unequal, with the top sliver growing vastly richer while the middle class has struggled. Is there a relationship between these phenomena? Has the Internet contributed to the increase in inequality? Perhaps it’s too early to make a definitive judgment, but at the very least the Internet has given birth to a new class of barons whose fortunes equal or exceed those of the traditional Wall Street variety. As the career of Steve Jobs showed, however, journalists tend to celebrate these moguls for their savvy and cool rather than examine the enormous wealth they’ve amassed and the political and economic ends to which they put it.
With the poor performance of Facebook’s IPO (the avalanche of coverage of which was another case of journalistic excess), a backlash against Web companies may be developing. If the bubble does burst, however, it seems likely, based on past performance, to produce a new round of personality-driven stories, like the 2,000-word profile The Washington Post recently ran about Facebook “fugitive” Katherine Losse, Mark Zuckerberg’s ghostwriter, who, gradually souring “on the revolution in human relations she witnessed from within,” fled the company for the hip artist colony of Marfa, TX. As one reader commented, “She had some co-workers/friends who were a bunch of jerks, so she quit her job and relocated to another part of the country. Why is this news?”
About this:
"It’s been roughly 20 years since the Web began to emerge as a significant presence in America, and over that period the country has grown much more unequal, with the top sliver growing vastly richer while the middle class has struggled. Is there a relationship between these phenomena? Has the Internet contributed to the increase in inequality? Perhaps it’s too early to make a definitive judgment..."
Barlett & Steele are on book tour (http://www.npr.org/2012/08/06/157063512/american-dream-betrayed-by-bad-economic-policy) and in each interview they mention that the biggest surprise to them over the 20 yrs since their original series was published is not that this happened but that it happened so fast. That same time period coincides exactly with the rise of the internet and huge advances in computing capacities---in speed, accessibility, ease and elegance of use. While listening to them I've wondered if the forces they documented 20 yrs ago picked up speed because of technology. For example, without good computers, it was harder to analyze international tax, trade & labor policies and then take actions about the range of options for gutting American manufacturing, employment, and financial security.
#1 Posted by MB, CJR on Wed 15 Aug 2012 at 10:43 AM
Re the reader comment on the NYT's Katherine Losse story, I wouldn't be quite so harsh. As you mention, she was not only creeped out by her boss and fellow workers but also by the nature of the product. Quitting on that basis merits some notice. How many of us do that? Then gain, how many of us have Losse's wealth?
As part of my job, I read a good deal about the online world, including quite a bit about publishing. If I had to draw a general conclusion, I'd say the Internet has cost us a good deal more in material terms than we've managed to squeeze out of it. What we have gained, as you suggest, is hard to measure, given that it's mostly stuff that can be gauged only subjectively. But the material losses in the publishing industry alone are immense. And to the degree that the Internet opens the way to a range of offshoring activities, losses extend to a number of industries.
Meanwhile, the new technology itself, the Internet, isn't generating many jobs to replace the many lost. As with so much else online, employment prospects are relatively few, vaporous and -- for most -- precarious and unpromising. Given all this, I would say the time is ripe for an anti-Internet movement. Of course, a reader comment online is hardly the ideal place for launch.
#2 Posted by Pelham , CJR on Wed 15 Aug 2012 at 05:33 PM
"With the poor performance of Facebook’s IPO (the avalanche of coverage of which was another case of journalistic excess), a backlash against Web companies may be developing."
Sorry, but you're not looking at it correctly. Facebook can never achieve total global penetration. Why?
What percentage of the world is Facebook-ready? Subtract from the 7 billion on the Earth all those who are illiterate, horrifically impoverished, living in locations without the necessary infrastructure to support (or necessitate) the Internet, let alone Facebook, and so forth.
My suspicion is that Facebook has hit its "peak oil" moment. It may continue to gain new members, but all the best harvesting has been done already. All those illiterate farmers in China and India are never going to one day become Facebook users. "Plowed the fields for 12 hours. Just like every day. Boy, am I tired. Just like every day." It's a first-world conceit that life is anything but -- as the Simpsons put it -- first toil, then the grave.
Not only has the peak harvesting been finished, people are quickly going to start moving away from Facebook. The number of stories about people whose lives have been tidily ruined thanks to Facebook continues to grow. The learning curve took a while, but the consumers are beginning to grasp that this fun-fun social tool is really nothing more than a recipe for losing a job, wiping out a career, constantly being haunted.
Which brings me to the start of this screed. Facebook's IPO was quite successful. IF -- and IF is a big word -- you look at it from the framework I've outlined. If Facebook is a year or two from complete collapse as a web phenomenon -- just like MySpace, Digg, AOL discs in the mail every day for five years, and so forth before it -- why wouldn't the Facebook people try to wring a little more money from the gullible while the Facebook brand still has the ability to part fools from their money?
#3 Posted by Alex, CJR on Thu 16 Aug 2012 at 08:27 AM
Let's not get confused. The Internet coincided with massive advances in technology, transport, and changes in global trade law. It's possible to claim that the technology advances made managing a factory in Guangzhou from a desk in New York easier and cheaper, but it's very likely that these changes would have happened anyway had there been no Internet.
And the cheap communication from users has been a powerful community building tool, and those communities have yet to really flex their muscles. I think you will see that happen more with the generation that grew up with Internet than the generation that watched the Internet grow.
That is if they aren't busy playing Warcraft.
#4 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 16 Aug 2012 at 10:20 AM
It is a sad but inescapable fact of journalism today that we report far more intensively on "trends" than we do on important things like local fiscal policy, local government, the local economy -- in other words, things that really affect our readers' or listeners' lives. And I fear it is out of a combination of fear and apathy.
The fear is that we will look like we're missing something if we don't leap with alacrity upon the trends bandwagon. The apathy is the curse of journalism today -- the truth is, a lot of journalists have become so fatalistic about the future of their craft that they seem to be phoning it in, instead of finding ways to be more relevant and continuing to produce news that, in the end, is meaningful for our consumers.
We bemoan our demise and attribute it to the Internet, something that I find richly ironic given our dotage on the subject.
Perry White
#5 Posted by Perry White, CJR on Fri 17 Aug 2012 at 10:15 AM
Not to dismiss all the intelligent comments so far, but I gotta say, the internet is the single most important invention in the history of mankind. If it disrupts industries, for better or worse, then so be it. I know it's a cliche, but when automobiles came along, the buggy whip industry was disrupted too, but did that mean we should have rebelled against the proliferation of the automibile? Of course not. If history has taught us anything, it's that progress cannot (and should not) be stifled in the name of tradition.
#6 Posted by Jimmy Olsen, CJR on Fri 17 Aug 2012 at 05:56 PM