Quote:
Originally Posted by Obadno
What has happened is the pre internet world of credentialism has collapsed due to the internet (this has happened before). Hate to inform all but it will take a couple generations for society to renegotiate authority in the wake of the information revolution.
In the meantime it will be chaos. The best you can do is build the foundations of authority that may become the new trusted institutions (no promises it will work) we will all be long dead before things "settle"
|
It hasn't totally collapsed (although in these cheap forums, where there is zero lost by all of us blusterers, it can *feel* that way). The educational premium is actually higher than it used to be, despite people lamenting otherwise. It is harder than ever to find qualified labor, despite there being an increasing premium on talent, credentialed or otherwise.
Authority in the political arena has shifted what used to be religious fervor into that particular space. We still have a loss of authority and trust in these highly-symbolic spaces, but the passion is there. During the transition to literacy, there was a LOT of conflict that was unleashed in transitioning authority from the religious sphere (church, monarchy) to the civil sphere that dominates literate culture (educators, lawyers, engineers, business folk). We are gradually making the shift through media culture (we hardly talk about that these days--how Presidents are really media creations) and to network culture. Right now, we're all stumbling around looking for whether or not we can trust Yelp reviews, turned in school work, or news stories, when all we have are standards based on a tightly-regulated, and socially-stable print culture. Once we are able to re-establish liability for those doing harm online (libel, etc.), spaces with heightened scrutiny
and accountability (what the professions used to do, and what the FCC, SEC, and other organizations did), and regularized spaces for negotiated conflict that replaces unregulated conflict, we'll be there. We just have to re-orient ourselves to what makes people's lives better in *this* moment, rather than trying to ape what it used to be. It's too easy to copy-and-paste essays, provoke anger with bots, etc. I've been off social media for years, and hardly ever look at a non-paper newspaper, despite spending 80% of my workday on the Internet. I do LOTS of verified work there, but that level of verification hasn't yet transitioned to the "Rage-o-Sphere" that every side monetizes for eyeball space. It will get there when the consequences for threats, lies, and rage outweigh the benefits.
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Life, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way-in short, the period was so far the like present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
Prev
Linear Mode
