Jeff Jarvis is tripping
Jeff Jarvis is an intelligent man with a sentimental populist side. He’s writing a book praising Google, and sharing his thoughts as he goes along. Today’s entry goes off the deep end with this dismissal of intelligence:
The curmudgeons also argue that this level playing field is flooded with crap: a loss of taste and discrimination. I’ll argue just the opposite: Only the playing field is flat and to stand out one must now do so on merit – as defined by the public rather than the priests – which will be rewarded with links and attention. This is our link economy, our culture of links. It is a meritocracy, only now there are many definitions of merit and each must be earned.
Pardon me, but don’t we all know better than that?
Most people are stupid, and the Googlenet hasn’t changed that. The wisdom of crowds isn’t wise, it tends to the lowest common denominator. You don’t get popularity in the Googlenet by saying things that are intelligent or insightful, you do by showing naked women in various states of compromise and by inflaming the emotions in other equally manipulative ways. So this commentary simply ignores these truths of human nature. The link economy isn’t about “merit;” people link indiscriminately to things that made them laugh, get sexually aroused, pissed off, or confused.
If you want a culture that rewards excellence, you aren’t going to get it by ranking pages by the number of morons who saw fit to link to them, you rank them by the number of intelligent people who found them valuable. And that evidence shows up in the real world, not on the Googlenet.
- August 7th
agree. merit, “producing quality content”, they have nothing to do with “success”