Pandora’s box

So I’ve been reading a lot of blogs lately, as one does, and the comments and discussions that flow from them. Is it just me or has this become a new way to pass the time? Are the internet, and other forms of electronic communication, replacing hard copies of things: books, newspapers, maps?

I am an object of derision to many friends (they may soon lose this status) because I still use a road map to navigate my way around town rather than some little gadget you suction to your car’s windscreen, so that a strange sounding person can tell you where to get off. The last time I used one to get to a funeral the departed had, well departed, by the time the wretched voice was switched off and we relied on the position of the sun, a sextant and hunches to find his resting place.

A recent New Yorker article on Kindle, Amazon’s wireless reading device, by Nicholson Baker very wittily dissected this new phenomenon, comparing it to Sony’s Reader. As well as commenting on that fact that Kindle electronic books can be read on the iPod Touch and the iPhone, but not on other devices, Baker also mentions the Ectato jetBook, the iRex iLiad, the Cybook, the Hanlin V2 and the Foxit eSlick. Apart from the awkward juxtaposition of lower and upper case and numbers (this seems to be a pre-requisite for naming new devices and offends my sensibilities), how on earth do people come up with these names? They seem designed to lure with the promise of a combination of technology and glamour, like a 21st century sex toy.

Will these gadgets replace the satisfaction of the paper book, the thrill of seeing how far you have to go as you relish a racy novel, the feel of a heavy and worthy academic piece in your hand, the smell of the damp pages of the romance you are reading at your beach holiday? Who knows, but everywhere you read (online of course) about the imminent demise of the hard copy newspaper. I for one will mourn this loss but times change and so do we, almost unthinkingly, as we accept new technology into our lives.

But I digress. What I really wanted to talk about today was the nature and quality of commentary as the “general public” respond to the bloggers. This is probably going to sound elitist but honestly while the internet has democratised knowledge and the ability of anyone with an internet connection and a service provider to “have their say”, alas this has not led to an increase in manners or courtesy. I am appalled at the rudeness, the arrogance, the insensitivity, the crassness (I could go on) of so many people out there.

On the one hand I do think it’s a useful barometer of what people are thinking and feeling but do I really want to read racist and sexist rants? And are these voices representative – or do they reflect an elite who have access to this technology? More pertinently, what do these people do for work? If you go to the same sites regularly you begin to see the same voices cropping up at all times of the day, and I am now convinced that a cadre of professional blog responders (henceforth known as PBRs) exists out there. Of course my bias, old fashioned homosexual that I am, is towards intelligent, thoughtful and considered points of view, well supported by checkable facts rather than conjecture (or Wikepedia!) if possible.
One site even had a discussion thread about discussion threads and whether there should be a shared set of values to which all PBRs should subscribe so that the tenor of the conversation was genteel and no one got hurt. Actually this is not a bad idea because there is way too much anger out there, but I fear it is un-doable. The Pandora’s box has been opened and the internet has become a conduit for the weird, the wonderful and the wrathful. Perhaps this is not a bad thing, but like all things created by us humans, with progress can come pain.