From “Did you open a URL today?” and “Did you really want to visit it?” to “What do you want other people to see on internet tomorrow?”
In my opinion, we are surrounded by opinions. News. Social Media. Friends. Family. Knowledge could be synonymous to having an informed opinion.
The more knowledge we gather and share in a way that others value it, the more our opinion starts to matter. And the more our opinion starts to matter, we can look at it as an incentive to gain more knowledge and put it out in the world for everyone to refer.
How is it related to being present on web?
I remember the time when, forget about being on the internet, using it was a privilege and very expensive. With the invent of search engines and decrease in the infrastructure cost, it became easy to be on it and get found on it. Now, after a lot of technological advancements over the last two decades and people documenting a version of their lives digitally, the internet has evolved into an Archive. Of Everyone(almost).
Even if we don’t want to add to it willingly, our activity is being tracked.
So, we are contributing to how internet will look tomorrow and which opinions will be trending. And if we are consuming these trends, isn’t that what controlling how the world looks? (People in power also form their opinion somehow)
How heavy is the needle?
If you feel that this is not fair, you can stop using the internet. But, the world will keep using it so it will keep moving in the direction without your wilful contribution to it. Now, I am not saying that it’s going to cause a major deviation. But our activity or the lack of it, will reflect in the numerators and denominators of parameters that are being analysed. It will move the needle in some direction. When something on internet goes viral, is it always a good thing? No. But it always reflect the snapshopt of how the current sample space (people on internet) think and what they deem important.
Welcome to the playground!
While it’s hard to quantify the effect of each activity on the internet without Laplace’s demon, I believe we should be an active agent to bring forth the changes we want to see. Whether it’s looking up a recipe, adding a vlog of your vacation or creating a blog containing steps for a DIY telescope, I would encourage us to ask one question “What do we want to see more of in the world?”
A few more cents!!
Use web as your journal. Keep track of your own life, its memory is better than ours anyway and has a better search mechanism. Leave some stories on the web or create a town there. It is going to outlive us anyway.