DarwinMag.com is running a column of mine about why I’m sooo tired of hearing about information:

I’m on the Web all day. Do you know how much time I spend dealing with information? On a good day, none. I’m reading, writing, talking with people I know and am getting to know, checking my e-mail, avoiding work. Information is the last thing on my mind. So it seems odd to me that information is such a focus of interest when it comes to the Net, as if that’s what the Net is made of.

<snipping the entire body of the column…>

Why does this matter? Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe I’m just being cranky because it’s Election Day and I’m feeling particularly doomed. Yet, maybe it has everything to do with how we experience the Internet and thus with what we think it’s for and what ought to be done with it. The old idea that it’s an Information Highway made it appealing to governments and corporations but obscured the fact that it’s more about connection than the transfer of facts. It’s more about wet and messy humans doing all the things that can be done with words, pictures and sounds than about rational beings engaged in research.And that’s why the Internet is a world and not just a medium: Media are good for moving bits, bytes, facts and information from A to B. A world is a rich context, irreducible and unfathomable — the grantor of the space in which its inhabitants can split hairs, flame and fall in love.

The information that shows up on the Web is part of the Web’s world. But you could never get to the world of the Web if you started only with information.

Categories: Uncategorized dw