Geert Lovink: After the social media hype: dealing with information overload [2013]

The “social media” debate is moving away from presumed side effects, such as loneliness (Sherry Turkle), stupidity (Andrew Keen), and brain alterations (Nicholas Carr), to the ethical design question of how to manage our busy lives. This Foucauldian turn in internet discourse sets in now that we have left behind the initial stages of hype, crash, and mass uptake. Can we live a beautiful life with a smart phone, or is our only option to switch it off and forget about it? Do we really have to be bothered with retweeting each other’s messages for the rest of our lives? When will the social fad that is Silicon Valley be over and done with? We are ready to move on. Time to send your last lolcats. Mainstream internet discourse has turned sour. How long can we bear witness to the shadow boxing of useful idiots such as Steven Johnson, Clay Shirkey, and Jeff Jarvis, who ceaselessly battle Evgeny Morozov over whether memes have supremacy over the American liberal opinion space? Is social media the nail in the coffin of traditional gatekeepers? “Twitter is a vast confusion of vows, wishes, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, pleas, laws, complaints, grievances” (James Gleick). Who will guide us in our search for the rules, duties, and prohibitions of digital, networked communication? Where is the stoic calm in this sea of populist outrage? [ mais ]