25.4.08

Meta life sucks

This is a big one.

I have figured out life.

The whole concept of meta sucks. The most poignant example of this is Web 2.0, the web talking about the web acting within the web allowing for the social and society based within the web.

This all sucks, or indeed is generally false.

The reason why it sucks will be explained in a more general term in a moment, but the reason why it is false is simple. The reality is that the lives of the people (the currency of Web 2.0) are not based upon the web but are based upon the structures they have developed externally of the Internet. These can be families, hobbies, jobs but entirely not reliant on the web for anything other than as a function of support for these. The perfect example of this can be seen in the TWiT network of podcasts, all of the presenters are at the high end of technology but all use this as an aside from their 'real' lives whilst at the same time can be seen as major proponents of the meta-web (though they may not except this themselves). As journalists (in the main) they hold down positions within the Internet but only as ways to make money for their families, to develop hobbies... To drink the best coffee and so on. In this vain, no matter how creative, or complicated or indeed complex the Internet will become its convoluted reality is no better than television.

Unproductive television usage waste lives. That is television usage that is dependency without reflection. The same can be said with the Internet. That is without a critical focus, without a crutch of reality with which to look though the looking glass nothing good can come of it. This is the meta life. A life where actions and activities are a basis for themselves and never about anything more. Just like watching a bad soap on t.v. can be an inane activity, it can also become an activity that stimulates a social context - chatting about how rubbish it is with your friends - using the Internet from the position of needing to be in the Internet is similarly inane. Just as the TWiT'ers have a crutch so should you on what activities you partake in whilst surfing because even though the richness of this new medium is so great it does not escape the reality of banality simply through complexity.

Thus in this state, the only way to grow as a person is through escaping the meta. Escaping the idea that a context can have no context other than itself. You cannot be you without a reason to exist (friends, family, money). The meta Internet should be a tool towards your goals; games should be social, blogs should be career enhancing, facebook should be networking. And in the wider context, fun should be soul enhancing.

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