A BIG Internet Rant

Luke Leslie Autumn 2006

Sometimes the internet makes me laugh, and I love the internet - it's fucking great. It's amazing to think that just a generation or two ago people's primary way of staying in contact over long distance was pen and paper, rather then keyboard and mouse. The main thing I'm about to say here is of course my own opinion, so I'm sure people will disagree with me, but my opinion currently is that there still ain't a way of properly communicating online. Here, Let me explain why:

What do people use if they want to discuss or argue about a different topic? They use Forums, on the other end of the spectrum is Instant Messaging, which is used more by networks of friends. But regarding foums; in a large forum lets say Boards.ie for example, you don't know the people, you will never meet, and they seem to come online with the sole purpose of acting like complete morons. These people are unafraid of being rash, rude and most common of all - are totally uninformed about what they are discussing - generally expressing opinion as fact. Just like reality I hear some people say - but the problem with forums is everyone is anonymous, practically everyone has no respect for anyone, people don't talk like how they would if they were face to face, people get away with being complete arseholes - and don't care because it's not like "JamesK9078" knows where you live.

This attitude of hostility, arrogance and brash uncensored ignorance for me anyway; gets old. I mean I love when there's some kind of Scandalous or inteligent discussion on the buckedcranium forum, things are lively, fast and far more interesting then when we're all just talking about how much we can't wait for the next big summer movie. But I believe the main barrier thats stopping more realistic discussion is - Keyboards. Heres why:

People are typing rather then talking, they are reading rather then hearing, that leads to misunderstandings (happens to me all the time) the written word is not the same as the spoken word, I know seems obvious but so many arguments on the forums of this site have stemmed from misunderstood, misinterpreted or misread posts. People get offended - and whereas in face to face discussion, people pick up on offence, confusion, sarcasim, or down right anger subliminally by reading each others faces or body language and then perhaps decide to rephrase what they just said where as; online people post long angry bitchy posts in reply and then interesting discussion descends into "quotation" and Attack. It sucks and could be avoided if some clever Entrepreneur decided to revolutionize the standard for Internet discussion.

The simple fact of the matter is Forums are archaic in the face of live-chat. And chat is archaic in the face of Video chat. What I see as the replacement for MSN, AOL Instant messenger and possibly even web-boards is some kind of program that allows users to log-in automatically and jump straight into Live video discussion. It could work natively in your browser or could be loaded up seperately like MSN for example. You log onto the Videochat company homepage a bit like Google, and search for a topic then choose to enter a "Video Chat room" of like minded people. Or you could browse around the internet on individual sites come across one you like, who has chosen to use a videoforum instead of a web-board. You enter a discussion and suddenly you join a group of people all of which you can see - and hear - discussing a specific topic dealing with a subject you find interesting. Obviously this would require a bit of imagination.

Now bear with me: Imagine a very easy to use interface that can allow an infinite group of people to discuss virtually anything. The TV series of Ghost in the Shell depicts a system that works quite well. Imagine a 3D Environment, a large room for example, people are participating in a discussion and are gathered around a circular table in the centre of the room, there are listeners quietly sitting back in tiered seats that surround the table. Images, text documents or video files can be placed on the table and looked at by everyone, so let's say you conversation is regarding recent devolpments in Iraq, a live video feed could be dragged from a web-page and onto the table, and hey presto your all watching it. That's in a Sci-fi TV show depicting the chat rooms of the future, but the technology is here today to do something very similar.

Here's a image I mocked up explaining what It could look like. This perticular chat room is very small, theres only 5 people chatting, but it could easily be any number. The room is 3D you can totally rotate your point of view, the text at the bottom can be configured to scoll around the table much like a stock ticker. You can click on the individual users and talk to them privatly, send them a written message, or pull up info on them. The thing is, only the people actually speaking or making significant contribution to the discussion can be seen, atleast in my ideal chatroom, but as a user you could change this. You can choose to just sit quietly and then duck out if the people in the room seem like idiots, or you realize you entered the HotMale chat room, as opposed to the Hotmail chatroom.

The real version could be identical or drastically different to the one shown above, the cool part is the user could totally change the way he views the web-room. The administrator could set a default setting - but the user could change the look of a chat room to suit himself. And like a modern chat room, Once you enter a Topic you can sit back and listen, in which case you do not appear in the center of the discussion, but if you join in you are placed in a circle of users - who everyone is watching. A system could allow the person speaking to have a larger image than the crowd - all to allow people to not only hear you, but to see you. Communication is primarily made up of body language anyway - and I think this is far far better then the standard internet we currently use. Broadband is now fast enough to allow multiple users to to sit in a "Chat room" and see each other, talk, use visual aid, and appear as "Real People" rather then Screen names with a logo. Take me for example - I currently have a little animation of Tom cruise electrocuting Opera. Imagine a time when we're all on web boards and are infact talking face to face.

My conclusion is the online world of chat and discussion still seems sub-par. Currently you may argue all you want online, but it will never be as good a real face to face discussion. However if you combine the best elements of live face to face discussion with the freedom of the web: talking to people anywhere in the world, and allowing everyone to retreat to a place to discuss anything, any niche interest, any-bloddy thing conceivable, round the clock, would be absolutly fantastic. I think this is where the internet is going.

Web-cams are already piss cheap - and companies like Apple are building them into all of their computers. And if somebody would just program the damn system, like a live video version of Skype, make it as easy to use as MSN, yet as powerful as the user needs - all free for anyone - paying users could perhaps get extra features- it would take off in an instant and you could make huge profit.

there's my rant for the evening.

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online since Jan 06

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