The Shape of Days

Still working. Creating something wonderful. Poked head up long enough to say this:

“Wikipedia,” “Flickr” and other examples of so-called “social networks” and “Web 2.0” are based on the premise that if you get enough people in the same place talking about the same thing, eventually wisdom will emerge spontaneously.

It’s the same logic that supports the million-monkey thesis. That is, that a million monkeys pounding randomly at a million typewriters will, given enough time, produce all the great works of English literature.

This is of course bunk, because it neglects what I’ve taken to calling the ice-cream principle.

The ice-cream principle goes like this: What do you get if you stir a teaspoon of shit into a gallon of ice cream? You get a gallon of shit.

Bullshit is not bound by the law of conservation of energy. Bullshit spontaneously generates. Bullshit is naturally occurring. Bullshit is the informational equivalent of entropy. It is inescapable, and ever-increasing.

The law of probability tells us that it is possible, theoretically, for the shards of a broken teacup to launch themselves spontaneously back onto the table and reassemble themselves. But the laws of thermodynamics tell us why this will never, ever happen no matter how long you wait.

The laws of probability say that wisdom can emerge spontaneously from randomness. But informational entropy — i.e., bullshit — ensures that this cannot happen.

So looking at a site like “Wikipedia” and finding bullshit should be no more shocking than discovering that ice melts in the sun or that water runs downhill. The emergence of bullshit from social networks is not a surprising unintended consequence; it is pure, crystalline inevitability.

Going back to the salt mines now.

• An evil Nazi assassin killed my hard drive
• No blogging, please
• The best ban ever