The internaut is dead. Who is left in charge?
We do not surf any more. We are slaves of notification.
Who cares if the web is accesible and user friendly if one can access any content at any moment by using aggregations apps such as Feedly, Zite, Flipboard or any tool that strips down the web to simple text and images displayed on tablets and smartphones?
It seems that this is the beginnig of a shift which will bring about huge consequences. Let’s take language: we’re approaching the point when the terms internaut, netizen, and cybernaut will lose their currency.
We should be mindful of the spectrum of social and political effects which arrived on the same tide as these terms. Do we have to throw the baby out with the seawater?
How can we define the modern individual who is always plugged in to the cellular network, but has no aspiration to understand the infustructure, gain control, or modify the software and hardware that they’re using? Who is going to coin the proper term for this group?
Internaut, netzen, cybernaut - all of these words have come to seem old-fashioned even before they had the chance to be in vogue. There is something even funny about these words now. They give rise to the same sort of feeling as might be had by looking at a 1950s sci-fi fantasy view of the future, when people of the current era were portrayed using wireless communicators and getting to work in flying cars. So right and so wrong all at once. Putting it another way, don’t be too eager to resonate with the Zeitgeist.
We are compelled to paddle in the shallow waters of smartphone and tablet use, while becoming ever more detached and baffled by the complex technological wizardry running in the background to make these systems work. Maybe that’s why the concerns raised by advocates of internet neutrality and privacy don’t bring out the massive public responce and outpouring of open criticism.
There is a question to be asked about whether the proliferation of apps has come at a cost. For every app which lets us easily create, use, and share content, the role of the web becomes less and less important. We may reach a point where no actual websites remain, and yet where nobody cares or even notices.
I published this text on medium.com as @zetzero