Saturday, October 27, 2012

A Philosopher's Overview of the Current State of the Internet

The internet as we know it can be reduced to a number of neat typological categories. It helps when these categories involve real things that the internet does, psychologically and cognitively, and not just "ideas" about what the internet is supposed to represent. Instead of using categories like "politics" or even "news" it helps to use words like "updates" and "distractions". These secondary (primary) senses of words integrate the concept of the web with metaphysical categories such as causality, psychology, abstraction, and rarification. In this endeavor I will focus on individual/interface references, with implications for social/political references:

Here is a list of the properties:
1. Citizenship
2. Game theory
3. Preferences
4. Updates
5. "Paradines" (a word I have coined for paradigmatic applications)
6. "Textures" broadly defined
7. Social and ideational orchestration

This is a simplified view, but attempts to encompass much of what it means to use a computer, judging by the recent paradigm that much of computer usage means internet usage. For example, indexes, which are one of the major ideas on the internet, can be reduced to a form of game theory, preferences, updates, textures, or social and ideational orchestration; functionality renders the concept ambiguous. If there is a connection between these concepts and a larger framework, it is that these dimensions may be translated into contexts of application, such as virtual markets, social media, and responsibility.

The major purpose of this list will be to serve as a basis for translating new concepts of internet function in my next blog post, about the future state of the internet.


No comments: