by Charlie Huenemann
Now that every click we make is watched, archived, and meta-data-fied, it is time to start thinking seriously about a personal ethics of internet consumption. This goes beyond mere paranoia and worry over what others might think of what you're taking interest in. Each click is in fact a tiny vote, proclaiming to content providers that you support this sort of thing, and hope to see more of it in the future. And – as always! – we should vote responsibly.
It's too bad, really. Gone are the days where, with the adjustment of a couple of browser settings (“Privacy – on!”), no one could ever know that we were clicking away at all sorts of embarrassments, from naked people to celebrity gossip to stuff that might accurately be labeled as very nasty. It was a seemingly harmless way to let that little id go crazy and graze its fill. Content providers happily supplied the forbidden fruits and we gobbled them up.
Now the jig is up. Privacy settings are as effective as the dark vs. light lever on a toaster. But more significant than any embarrassment we may feel is the fact that our clicking is factored into incredibly effective algorithms which help to steer more of the same our way. And as more of us click on crap, more and more similar crap is generated for consumption, and the internet gradually expands into wall-to-wall crap.
Immanuel Kant's perspective on ethics might suggest to us a Categorical Internet Imperative: Click only on those links that you can at the same time will all your fellow citizens to click on. I don't know about you, but many times I feel that if everybody were just clicking on what I'm clicking on, our culture would be racing toward – well, to pretty much where we are these days, I guess: a few reliable sources of insight and information doing their best to compete with freak shows, bear-baitings, and adorable kittens attacking paper bags.
Not to say we have to be Prussian prudes, of course. Insight and information can come from surprising places, and we surely need clowns to tip us off balance and question ourselves. And there's nothing wrong with just plain old fun (as if anyone needs to be told that). But once we begin seeing our clicks as tiny votes, we begin to think about what sort of sustenance we are channeling into our own minds, and what sort of diet we are recommending to our neighbors. Let us dream a little: if all the clickers out there aimed more consistently toward “good stuff”, content providers would be competing to produce more and more of that stuff. Gradually, one hopes, we would witness the ebbing of the crap, and the waxing of a gloriously informed and inspired culture.
(Okay, that's crazy talk. But even a small shift in that direction would be to the good.)