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October 15, 2003
More Digital Feudalism
I have some disagreements with this essay that I'll get back to at a later date, but I want to note it now because I'm on a tribal/fuedal kick at the moment. Plus I really want to finish Quicksilver today. Note this for disagreement.
There are now a number of forums and devices on the Internet where people come together to compete in some way. To name a few examples: Blogging is where you maintain a public diary, but can also attempt journalism and news analysis; Online games, where you pit strategy skills and reflexes against remote opponents; and discussion forums where you engage in debate. And least we forget the realm of amateur enterprise such as fanzines, novels and short stories, essayists, artists, musicians, pundits, advice givers and so-on. Where people come together in creative endeavor they will compete, but on the Internet nobody has been dividing anyone up into featherweight and heavyweight—except, perhaps, by how much traffic your web site gets.That in turn has meant the pressure to excel is enormous on the young and the unaccomplished. Without visible class distinctions there's no filter, and without the filter there's a compulsion to compete with people who are “out of your league”. We'd be happy to say this is universally good, since it appears a few of those low-income kids have been motivated into performing as well as, or even better than older, wealthier, better educated peers. But that brings us to the second effect, which is that the higher classes are now looking for other ways to recognize each other within the context of the Internet.
...Therefore, pulling strings and passing laws to get underprivileged kids into college may have exactly the opposite effect of what was intended; diluting the true value of a college education until it's no longer the key to a higher paying job..
Note this for Agreement:
The only limit on digital classes is how far they can scale, because after a certain point it becomes impossible to guarantee the... er... quality of a person with a signed key. It's not like your butler can't trace the naughty fellow who let the riff-raff join, but that as you get closer to the base of the pyramid there simply aren't enough butlers to keep up. The most effective digital classes won't grow much larger than a few thousand members. Digital identities won't stratify human status, but cluster it, instead, and the Internet equivalent of the caste system will look distinctly tribal.
Posted by mbowen at October 15, 2003 08:47 AM
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