For The First Time In the History of Mankind

Voila, ladies and gents. Perhaps the most overused concept in the contemporary communication of ideas. But doesn't it just reek of a journalistic attempt to grab attention?

This short rant took form after reading an otherwise excellent essay posted by Malcolm (http://malcolmpollack.com/?p=433) and referred to by good ole' Hig Bominid
The bone that's stuck in my throat doesn't arise from the astute, insightful and well supported arguments about the changing nature of what is "pertinent" or "attention-worthy" information, the evolving technological means of obtaining our information, or even the speculation about possible changes to the very structure of our social networs as a result of the aforementionned. What makes me gag is the obsession, found oh-so-commonly on blogs, with making one's own personal, contextualized observations into a universal conclusion.


"A watershed in the history of life on earth?" Doesn't this scream a tad of drama?
Sure, we've never had internet before. Sure, this is enabling us to do things we couldn't do before. Hell, is it something worth paying some thought to? Sure! But "watershed in the history of life on earth?"

The conclusion that our "ancient nature" can't keep up is a lovely image, but the reality is perhaps a little less dramatic. Our access to information is greatly changing, and in so doing our attention span is taking a bit of a beating.

This branches into two greater pet peeves of mine: the first, that people believe that because they CAN access news or info, that it must be useful and, therefore, used. The second is that blogging has some intrinsic power to liberate the masses, to democratize information and to moblize government-disabling militias of highly educated and wise netizens. Both of which are topics i'll be getting to at a later date.