Making a better Internet: a story in three acts

In this talk I weave together a story about the current state of Internet discourse. At the end I'll tell you how I think we can make it better. And then we'll most likely all go back to what we were doing and forget about it. Despite the likely futility of this exercise I'm going to do it anyway. Because I love the web and I really don't want us to destroy it.

Transcript

1. Making a better Internet
   a story in three acts
   

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3. Computer tycoon Sir Clive Sinclair, 69,
   weds his 33-year-old lap dancer
   

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5. WWIC
   

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6. “IOL has closed comments on this
   story due to the high volume of racist
   and/or derogatory comments.”
   

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8. Never read
   the bottom half of the Internet
   

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9. What surprises me the most about the bottom
   half of the internet, that place where all the
   angry comments go, is that so many of the
   people writing them turn out not to be rabid
   murderers but ordinary mild people who
   casually fire off drive-by verbal shootings in
   their lunch breaks.
   Sophie Heawood
   

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10. There’s a rule in the Council that no
    resolution can be debated on the day
    that it’s first proposed. Otherwise
    someone’s liable to say the first thing
    that comes into his head, and then
    start thinking up arguments to justify
    what he has said, instead of trying to
    decide what’s best for the community.
    Thomas Moore, Utopia
    “
    

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14. People
    The web is a technology, but more importantly, it is
    People constitute and maintain the network.
    Frank Chimero
    all the way down
    It is widespread and distributed, but it is very delicate.
    Like a real web, it needs constant maintenance to keep from tearing.
    

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17. Don’t be
    part of WWIC culture
    

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18. Remember not only to say the right
    thing in the right place, but far more
    difficult still, to leave unsaid the
    wrong thing at the tempting moment.
    “
    Benjamin Franklin
    

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20. Amplify
    the top half of the Internet
    

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22. Make
    a better Internet
    

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24. If we are going to ask people, in the form
    of our products, in the form of the things
    we make, to spend their heartbeats on
    us, on our ideas, how can we be sure, far
    more sure than we are now, that they
    spend those heartbeats wisely?
    Paul Ford
    

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25. Making a better Internet
    is not someone else’s job
    

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26. References
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1269050/Computer-tycoon-Sir-Clive-Sinclair-69-weds-33-year-old-lap-dancer.html
    http://www.ftrain.com/wwic.html
    http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/how-ancyl-plans-to-shut-down-cape-1.1357173
    http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/sophie-heawood-save-dappy-from-the-venom-of-the-anonymous-1870283.html
    http://alwaysreadthemanual.com/
    http://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/pictures-that-will-restore-your-faith-in-humanity
    http://wallblog.co.uk/2012/08/02/the-best-social-media-policy-every-written/
    http://blog.jackcheng.com/post/25160553986/the-slow-web
    http://contentsmagazine.com/articles/10-timeframes/
    Feedback? I’m @RianVDM on Twitter
    http://xkcd.com/386/
    

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