web two dot ass

As this recent post might have indicated, I am approaching my own personal saturation point when it comes to the Web. As with anything else, it’s all in the execution, and some sites execute great ideas while others fall flat, and fall flat repeatedly. My personal bias places the Wikipedia in the former category and just about any web-based social calendar software in the latter. If I’m spending more time setting up my social calendar than I am being social, the software is ass. And if you’re spending more time redoing old ideas safely than you are making huge mistakes and learning from them and pushing all of us forward, then you’re contributing to the ass.

The current ass exists because the Webolution, Web 2.0, whatever, isn’t about content. It’s about the pretty Ajaxy goodness, the menus that fade into view, slide out of view, about bolded Verdana and light gray tones and rounded corners. It’s not about substance; it’s about aggregating and tagging and delivering via SMS. And themes. Dear god, the themes.

And now there are spam blogs, or “splogs” as they have been dubbed. Splogs. I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

We are just as clumsy thinkers and feelers as we’ve ever been, and we’re not comprehending faster than ever to keep up with the ridiculous amounts of information spewed our way. Who gives a flying, fiery fuck whether or not it’s pretty? If we’re not learning new things in favor of collecting them, if we’re bookmarking our lives away, if we’re endlessly archiving the annals of cool, what are we becoming?

Computers. Really slow, buggy, lumpy computers, with extremely limited storage and processors made of cheddar cheese. But at least we’ve got iPods.