Connections, Conversations, Serendipity, and Shit

David Weinberger describes, in his discussion of hyperlinks, connections that can serve to reconfigure the entire (business) world. But do these connections actually reduce the distance between people, enabling better and more human conversations? Or do they serve to more distinctly define our place as nodes in networks?

He says that within pyramidal structures we are strictly defined. But it would seem that even in the decentralized power structure the web provides, we are still just as (if not more) defined than ever before - this definition is simply disguised as something we have written ourselves. We believe these new definitions to be our very essence, that the web captures something not previously able to be tamed. Weinberger obviously believes this makes us more free, but we are still defined - instead of a hierarchical definition of where we fit into a power structure, we have a definition bounded by hyperlinks.

Weinberger also talks about the freedom of movement on the web, saying, "If you want to go to a page, you just click on the link and, boom, you're there. (The fact that this might have required, beneath the surface, thirty 'hops' among servers in places you've never heard of is completely irrelevant. You don't see the hops; you just see the page)." But if we remember the digital enclosure, then we know that these thirty hops are not "completely irrelevant." Even if we don't see them, those other thirty servers do see them - and it makes their definition of us ever clearer.

Finally, Weinberger also introduces a concept we saw in Wark's Gamer Theory. "The Web isn't primarily a medium for information, marketing, or sales. It's a world in which people meet, talk, build, fight, love, and play," Weinberger says. He goes on to note that "without play, only Shit Happens. With play, Serendipity Happens." Play, however, is spontaneous. It cannot be given to us - in Wark's terms, it would seem that only a designer can truly play. If this is true, then Weinberger is probably right, and play would be good for a business. The problem, however, is that neither the pyramidal structure he derides nor the decentralized hyperlinked one he promotes actually provide much of a space for play.