The Failings of the Internet as a Revolutionary Storytelling Platform

The ‘revolution’ (or rather the evolution) I always wished would come once the internet expanded had nothing to do with what cool new products or services it would make available to people. It was not just about ‘how do I create an application for people to organise a weekly cooking timetable online and sell advertising to Uncle Ben’s in the process?’Despite all the benefits, the exciting online tools, the (granted) revolutionary ability it gives to people to communicate and make themselves heard, I am terribly disappointed because of the potential changes the internet has failed to produce.

Here you have a system where anyone can be heard. Anyone can share ideas in the public arena. After years of being starved of the necessary information and access to government that a true democracy requires, of media institutions forming the flagships of our storytelling culture, of communities being diluted by economic and industrial forces, we now have the ability to build healthier democracies, communities and storytelling cultures. And yet I don’t see this process materialising.

Sure I can book a flight online, network with someone from a completely different background and culture, talk to people with similar interests and organise events. And the progressive openness of the whole thing has brought huge benefits and made a lot of people in traditionally powerful positions stand up and take stock. But, just because I can put a video up on YouTube instead of renting a DVD, just because I can download music for free instead of buying an album, just because I can talk revolution and politics with like-minded individuals in Chile, doesn’t mean that the technology is contributing to any fundamental changes.

China is allowed to censor the internet for crying out loud – that’s one sixth of the world’s population. Interest groups can argue and organise themselves online, but there is no sense the populace as a whole is involved. And it is not because people as a whole ‘don’t care’, despite the fact that they are too busy downloading music and telling their mates what they had for dinner.

People aren’t as shallow, uninformed and self-centred as cynics and salesmen would have you believe. Distracted maybe, but people in general have a sense of right and wrong and would like to help, to make a difference, to do good. And yet despite the fact that the net is potentially the tool to get them going, the actual platforms are not really there. And this is the key.

The problem is how people are using the net and what platforms are available to them. A lot of what we are seeing is just online versions of what we were doing anyway. Maybe it is only with hindsight that we will see the wood through the trees, but I still think the current technology is being drastically underused, even misused.

Regardless, the revolutionary technology does exist, and the potential for the internet as a platform for Human culture and society is very evident.