Ignoring The Hype: The Reality of the Digital Divide and the Internet; and the Future.

I've been plugged in for a while in a lot of different things. Today, as I was running around doing things away from the internet - talking with a lady who is renting property, who is illiterate and who simply wants the best for her family - well, a few things became clear.

This woman had never seen a laptop computer before. I realized she couldn't read not by showing her the computer, but by pointing her to a document nearby. Unabashed, this 42 year old woman explained to me that she couldn't read. By no stretch was she a lesser person in her inability to read or write. She probably has a better idea of money than people with a credit card burning a hole through things which largely end up as landfill. Most of the technology, in fact most of the things bought are landfill. I said so to her, and she laughed with me, telling me about some of her experiences.

An unschooled yet educated person; brought up in the oral tradition, a widow and yet sustaining herself with no apology for being who she is. She is dressed cleanly, sufficient makeup to look presentable but not overdone. Sensible. She would not look out of place in an office. She babysits to pay the bills, cleans other people's houses, and manages to get by. The talk turns to the computer, the internet - things she has heard about, but not from anyone who uses them regularly. She worried about personal information being on the internet.

For her, Google doesn't exist, and Technorati wouldn't make sense. Web 2.0 is useless to her. I have the pleasure of informing everyone who is reading this that you exist as much to her as she exists to you. To you, she's invisible, and had I not spoken with her and decided to write about it, you wouldn't even know about her. You may not care about her. She probably doesn't care about you, or tagging, or the Caribbean. She knows a lot, this woman, but she couldn't be bothered with a lot of technology which is simply extraneous to her.

Say what you will, she's a good indicator of the future of the internet - more so than the client side scripting that they call the same name as the cleaning agent she uses for her toilet bowl - AJAX. If you ask her what a smart mob is, she'll tell you a story of a few men around a car that has broken down, and getting it running. If you talk to her about tags, she'll explain that they are a problem in that they keep popping out or chafing the neck. Ask her about a blog, and she'll tell you that she heard something about them, but that they don't help her pay her bills (would that the majority of bloggers understand the same is true). Ask her what a Google is, and she would probably say a large collection of something. Ask her about Yahoo, and she might remember a movie about Albert Einstein's niece falling in love.

She's not wrong.

The internet is self contained. And then, to make it more exclusive, there are sites that try to make it more contained. As soon as Linux and Free Software came out, those that were hyping it ran out and started calling it open source and selling a lot of things before they were ready to be sold. It's nothing new. It's a little thing called hype which gets credit for a lot of advances, but those that peddle it tend to ignore that slow and steady wins the race. If you're going to build something, build it to last.

I decided something today. I decided that the internet age hasn't really started, as I watched some pet company peddling 'to your door' prescriptions for pets in the United States while in large parts of the world, simply getting medication for humnans is a big deal. I am reminded of the cats of Egypt. But that's OK. People who watch American generated cable television are happy to know that, if they moved to the United States, they could get a dog or cat and have those pills sent directly to their doorstep. They are happy to know that, should they have some exotic disease that pharmaceutical companies create for hypochondriacs to buy their products, they can move to the United States and buy it - and have it shipped right to their door. A lot of the world, if you talk about a website, you may as well be talking about the fabled city of El Dorado.

Underneath all of the hype, underneath all the technorati tags and online discussions about people who are not online, there are people who are more interested in getting running water, electricity and maybe a phone.

Hype

I'm sick of the hype, myself. I'm sick of hearing about the 'next big thing', and seeing venture capitalists gather solemnly to an all night electronic orgy in the hope that they are not the ones who get screwed. I'm tired of hearing about how 'XYZ' will improve my access to information. I'm tired of hearing about how 'markets are conversations' and seeing the only people talking being marketers who rarely listen to the world. The only future of the internet that really counts is it's continued existence.

For a long time, I thought technology without morality was the problem, and I have come to understand that this was sophomorism. The real problem is that people try to sell things that don't work, and put the blame on the consumers when it doesn't work. I hear about things like phone blogging, and a part of me - picture any part that you are comfortable with - starts laughing insanely. Why on Earth would I log on to the information superhighway and listen to someone give a monologue? Maybe they can toss in a powerpoint presentation with it. The hype washes over me, and it leaves a strange smell which is largely unattractive.

Here's the truth. Some things work, some things don't. Over the course of the history of mankind, some things have lasted and some haven't. Oared ships don't exist as much - not because of the hype of using sails, or that the boat was made more attractive. Simplicity is the key. As complicated as humanity likes to make things, the simple things are the ones that survive. Everything else in the middle which excites people - and let's face it, people like to be excited (though they probably wouldn't like being stalked by a Saber Tooth Tiger), and because people want to be excited, they feed into complicated things that a monkey with a cocaine addiction could be trained to use.

There needs to be a reality check. The internet and the related technologies mean nothing unless they have context. No acronyms will change that - they never have, and they never will.

It was never the internet, stupid. It's people. Always has been, always will be... and hype just keeps people from dealing with problems in a realistic manner. Reinventing the internet in websites is stupid. Connect the dots instead of trying to hoard them, and you're on to something. Do that with the least amount of alien language, and you actually have something worthwhile.

If you can't explain it to an illiterate person, your technology is useless.