Experts in Information Experience Real Life Entropy: Not Much Fun, Right?
July 8, 2021
“The Internet Is Rotting” is 6,000 words which suggest that the end of “knowledge” is nigh. I am not sure “rotting” is the word I would have used. The subtitle for the write up is quite dramatic:
Too much has been lost already. The glue that holds humanity’s knowledge together is coming undone.
Online has been blasting bits since the late 1960s. A half century later “rot” is evident to the experts who recognize a problem and can provide mostly interesting examples. Here’s one:
This absence of central control, or even easy central monitoring, has long been celebrated as an instrument of grassroots democracy and freedom. It’s not trivial to censor a network as organic and decentralized as the internet. But more recently, these features have been understood to facilitate vectors for individual harassment and societal destabilization, with no easy gating points through which to remove or label malicious work not under the umbrellas of the major social-media platforms, or to quickly identify their sources.
Yep, the example is pretty much everything.
Several observations:
- Say “Hi” to what happens when “glue” fails in its basic job
- The elimination of gatekeepers is like pulling rods from a nuclear core. Stuff heats quickly, melts, burns, and eventually decides to take a trip to Entropy World
- The Internet is a manisfestation of online and is, therefore, one smaller component of the datasphere
- You can’t go home again.
One of the most visible aspects of digitalization is disintermediation. The gatekeepers are sent packing. Everyone’s an expert in online search, including those who think that Google delivers high value, accurate, unbiased information to faculty and students 24×7.
Paper outputs leave “trails.” These trails can be followed, whether by Dr. Gene Garfield’s link analysis method or by forensic investigators looking at cancelled checks. Now try to find a hard copy of a technical journal in a public library or an institution of higher education. Now try to locate the backfiles. With the shift to digital there are some challenges in the Pathfinder approach:
- Gatekeepers cannot be trusted
- Digital content providers can filter content, delete it, or not include items
- Users cannot determine what information is on point what is baloney
- Institutional structures which once assumed responsibility for accuracy have become less stable than the basements of Florida high rises
- Government entities struggle to perform basic functions. Hey, the IRS with its whizzy computer systems is years behind in processing tax returns.
- Kick back has become the optimal mode for learning. Forget that “hot” approach: Note taking, old fashioned lectures, reading books printed on paper, and writing in longhand.
There is a cultural shift which has occurred. This is not a gerund like rotting. Entropy can be calculated. The math I have done on the back of a 4×6 index card produces one of those cute equations which articular an infinitesimal approach to the construction of linear models. The outputs of these models will be evidence of racing toward zero.
It won’t take 50 years to get a lot closer to the x axis.
Stephen E Arnold, July 8, 2021
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