how Internet 3.0?

Nearly everyday I make an effort as a dedicated GooglePlus user to read the feed and post some specialized content that my 500+ followers hopefully haven't seen. I've been writing for years, creating original articles & reviews for my blog Dark Entries, cultivating a global audience (thanks again Mother Russia!), and investing alot of time to curate material that I myself would love to see.



But think ahead: When the goggles of Internet 3.0 go on, what happens to Internet 2.0's collections, community associations, expressions of fandom, 140-character blatherings, your unboxing videos, that food photo gallery you made, and especially the network of online professionals/friends/strangers you've built? Will internet 3.0's new paradigm of altered reality & virtual reality interfaces just write those off like a wind into a house of cards, scattering your decade of 2-D wall postings into oblivion?



Granted, there's a majority of user emphasis on the moment, on the post of the now. The backcatalog of content isn't usually gone through, as it seems viewers only want the new postings from the time forward from when they joined or subscribed. (Yet I know I scroll back, feeling like I'm digging for buried treasures when I discover a subject for the first time, playing catch-up to the group's reactions to episodes, or news, or evolutions in that subject.)



And granted, there's alot not to like about the current circle jerk of material, those deformed viral cats, the overposted meme, political/religious outrage, historical fingerpointing, racist interjections, trolls, and a safe anonymity from which to flare out any unintelligible, unfounded, or unmerited thing they please. There are no sacred cows, no respect, and thus no real convincing anyone about anything. Unattributed content is a particular pet peeve of ours as originators of artistic & informational value should always be recognized.



There's a lawlessness that's beyond apology, and a freedom that produces great beauty, and as audiences & authors we suffer one to enjoy the other.

[Where have you gone, ASCII art?]

 Fixtures of Internet 1.0 didn't weather the transition  with the prestige it once had. Large 2.0 social media hubs quickly usurped the attention & content from former giants like The Well, Usenet, LiveJournal, Angelfire, Geocities, and other once-established specialty niche threaded forums with participation ranked user mini-profiles.



Thus it's our concern that our irreplaceable time, our recognitions, and our creative output not be unmade, or left behind in the ignored cyberbasement. We wouldn't have bothered if we hadn't felt they were worth posting in the first place and at this point we feel having them sidelined would be unacceptable.

We would like to trust the current social networks to create an importing tool, something that will transform our postings into galleries or collections that will attach to our avatar or float near our person or decorate our virtual castle to summarize this cyberpublic history of ourselves, perhaps a recognition emblem of legacy content that can still be carried forward & explored by others. Yet watching how companies abandon software & applications with no consideration for the loyalist user who believes in the platform or format more than they do, we fear they may do the same in this newfound digital arena.



[Yes +Google VR , we're specifically asking you on behalf of your 300M social media users & the internet as a whole. And +Magic Leap & +Neal Stephenson , we're curious if you've considered our concerns, as we like your ideas.]

[The Augmented Reality overlay as drafted by Magic Leap.]

  We'd love some sort of Tronscaped interface option, which would clue into the cyberspace aesthetic we've anticipated since William Gibson first wrote & +Steven Lisberger first imagined.

[Map of The Grid!]

So we wonder with 3.0 just over the crest of the digital tomorrow, should we still be bothering to post & look as much as we do if it's all going to be binned? This uncertainty makes us hesitant, the unanswered question disturbing in its consequences.



I've got books to read in the meantime, which aren't going to change anytime soon, and a map to make. Someone do let us know before this continues, yes?

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While
a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo
Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals
for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan,
airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a
craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally
interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

the fallacy of social networks.

I must begin by saying that I don't buy into the idea of a "virtual community". The phrase itself reveals its oxymoronic limitations, as the concept is seeded by falsity from the get-go.



Largest case in point: Facebook. Why is Facebook fake? Are those 1,289 so-called friends going to buy you a drink tonight at the club, bother to make & bring you chicken bullion when you've got a cold, come pick you up when you've got car trouble, or bail you out of jail? No, they aren't.



Recently an umpteenth friend of mine exhorted, "You should get a Facebook. And just wait until someone adds you -- it's the best feeling!"



"Oh really? Better than sex?", I asked pointedly.



"Um, well no." And the exaggeration of it all began to dawn on her.



A page is just a page, a fill-in-the-blank non-paper representation of a person's perception of themselves, which may not even be them. Just go search for Claire Standish from "The Breakfast Club" or Ferris Bueller and you'll get nine of them. And that's not even a real person. Think you're friends with George Clooney? Think again.



Users generally slap together overcluttered pages, busily wallpapered with annoying midis, or animated gifs, even trite and unnecessary videoclips lifted from the distorted lens of television. These are not real nor honest representations. And the text is rife with baselessly clever attempts having no depth or substance. And face it -- most of the hits you're getting are probably from some glammed-out-in-your-fancy-sexpot-boots picture you put up, or from some flippant & ridiculous countercultural pose in lighting that doesn't exist in nature. It's someone at their most winning if it's them at all, and perhaps that's insightful in a limited way, but it's not really them 24-7, which is all a setup for disappointment if you ever met. And maybe even then said photo gallery visitor shan't bother to read a word of what you have to say, which is ultimately far more important than any photoset.



Such online networks only impart a false sense of intimacy. Still more than six degrees of electronics & geography away, we've been sold an illusion that an add is better than a handshake. And while those comments you post to someone, or the inbox messages you receive might illicit an emotion, it's in isolation, self-generated, with no real interactive event or other corporeal presence to reference. We keep tabs & bookmarks in the virtual so we can more easily take each other for granted without putting forth any real attention or commitment in what probably never was or will be a real friendship.



Without any postmodern realization about what they are doing, it feels as if everyone is building these cybershrines to slotlist these comparative images and shortlist answers about ourselves, 2-D temples of ego, all packed in an invisible server's silicone filing cabinet. The hint of shirttail reality is that it all refers back to the physical world, that these pictures of things, those goods we click upon, the email we traffic in are only phosphors or LCD ghosts, a nothing. 'Tis all a maia because there still isn't a "WarGames" where you push "Y" to execute superpowers via DOS, much less a trigger button to permaheadshot your enemy outside a cyber deathmatch.



None of it matters until the box is on your doorstep, you set foot on that faraway soil, or you hold a cuppa and look each other in the eye and touch actuality, the fist connecting, the discomfiting silence, the slippery bliss of a slow kiss. That's the sugar you really want.



So what does this stance have to do with my bothering to write this negation, and your precious time reading it? It is this: If I choose to give you anything at all, it will be myself, because that's the one precious thing that I have to bestow, and that's what I will post on my page & within my words to you.

[Not me, just photo illustration.]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.