The Web and the city
Steven Johnson, a blogger from www.outside.in, discuses the similarities between neighborhoods of NYC and the world wide web. He tells the audience how the internet is not a central idea, but a summation of everyone’s smaller ideas and how their ideas relate to eachother.
Another very interesting point he makes is that the web can be used to probe this collective knowledge. By analyzing what web users are searching for, one can gain a better understanding of the users.
http://www.ted.org/index.php/talks/steven_johnson_on_the_web_as_a_city.html
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It’s an interesting analogy, although the first thing that caught my attention when I watched the clip was the casual attitude of Johnson, expressed through his clothing style, hair style, tone of voice, and humor. The other thing was his mention of the benefits of urban density for sharing ideas, at which point I right away thought that I could see where he was headed based on the title of the talk. But in fact he switched his tone and became more serious when talking about the dangers of urban density, and then once again changed his tone towards being more optimistic and hopeful. Personally, I think the changes in tone attracted the listener’s attention and were therefore effective, but they caused more time to be spent than necessary.
In regards to the actual concept, I think it makes perfect sense that the Internet, by connecting many diverse people from around world, creates something along the lines of a super-metropolis, the same way that New York, by bringing together many diverse people from different ethnic backgrounds, creates a certain urban culture.
Johnson’s discussion of societal relations within the Internet was very informative. He organizes his talk so that his claim—that the web is interconnected and decentralized at the same time—is clearly substantiated with specific details. He begins with a comparison of the web with New York City two days after the September 11th attacks. Johnson states that although the city’s main center of trade was destroyed, the city still functioned as it did before—the streets were still full of people, businesses were still running. He claims that the city’s decentralized structure allowed it to keep running even after a terrible shock to its system. Johnson extends this idea to the web, where the system is decentralized and defined by the masses; that “everybody contributes a little bit”.
When Johnson talks about the new model of interactivity online, he creates effective comparisons with the old model, to demonstrate the new features that have developed in the web. With the new system, Johnson states that the web now has two-way linking, creating a more interconnected Internet community.
Johnson uses language that enables the audience to more visibly understand the concept of a city-like web community. He speaks of the “density” of both the city and the web, with many different people and resources located in a specific area. Johnson also refers to the term “emergent properties”, conditions that emerge from the masses in the Internet community. He calls the web a “global brain” that can be analyzed by systems such as Google Zeitgeist and Googleshare.
The only flaw I found in his argument was his discussion of the Historical Record of the State of the Union addresses. This remark was irrelevant to his claim.
However, Johnson’s argument was strong overall in its data and logos appeal. He even states that the rules underlying web relations are changing to become more democratic than before. The web, like the city, is not only decentralized in nature, but is also adapting to meet the needs of its evolving community.