People on the internet are far superior at making political decisions than real politicians are. And I mean people on the internet who are really using it, not your grandma checking her email. What we’re seeing is an emergence of a new kind of true democacy - everyone gets to say anything they want. And the best part is that the systems that allow this to occur, the systems that balance things out, the systems that maximize the signal ratio, are being developed right now. Take a look at the wide swath of internet communities: digg, reddit, youtube, facebook, myspace, 4chan, the “blogosphere” itself at large, twitter, slashdot, somethingawful, the list goes on and on. And they all run the gamut from best designed to foster strong, intelligent, productive discussions and interactions, and being the worst that attract only the scum of people. Compare, for example, the difference between comments on youtube, and comments on slashdot. Youtube is so ungodly horrible I’m confused why they even have a commenting system to begin with. Slashdot on the other hand is arguably the best discussion engine so far.

Whats that saying? “You go to reddit for the news and slashdot for the comments.”

And its completely true. The people on slashdot are generally of a more intellectual crowd than the people on youtube. It seems then that if you want a social network with high quality user submitted content, you simply need to design a system that understands how people think and interact, and then limit negative behaviors and promote the positive. Slashdot does this very well, youtube does not.

However considering how fast the social network field is growing every day, the competition is getting tight. Social networks are getting more and more advanced. You can put Flickr photos on your facebook page. You can show twitter posts from any blog. You have disqus forums embedded in people’s wordpress comments. You can embed youtube videos into forums. All the social networks themselves are linking together. OpenID, openSocial, twitter talking to your gmail account. Whats emerging these days isn’t just new startups and new social apps, whats emerging is a specific subset of the human population learning how we can best use and interact with each other over the internet. I imagine its somewhat like suddenly acquiring another limb and then having to learn how to use it.

But once we do all learn to use it, learn better and better ways to socially interact on the internet, I dare say its going to turn into a bit of a Neal Stephenson novel. I know I personally am essentially “online” constantly, even if its just a phone checking my mail or reading reddit headlines, txting off to twitter.

It’s like the internet is turning into a massively collaborative prosthetic device that allows all of humanity to be in constant communication and awareness. At what point do the cells become an organism?

Cue the suspensfull music.

The real interesting part is that not everyone is plugged into it. In fact, right now its a very small subset of people. But from an evolutionary and biological perspective, its clearly going to be the rise of the first biological organism that is more sentient than individual human beings. Governments will topple as people on the internet do away with any use for them. The internet made the world flat for companies, and now its going to make it flat for humans themselves. The only question then, is whether or not you’re in it.

I’m sitting at work and forgot to bring anything for lunch.  It is also pouring down rain.  Unfortunately I had to park a few blocks away this morning, so my options seemed to be to either tromp through the rain to get into my car and drive somewhere, or tromp through the rain ever further to get to the food court in the student center.  Neither seemed particularly appetizing.

Then while looking out the front window, I saw something that I almost always forget about:  There’s a WingZone about a block away!  I wondered, did they have an online ordering system?

Well I will save you the pain of wondering any longer.  Yes, they do.  I fired up the old internets there and created an account, chose a location, entered my address, gave special instructions, gave them my email.  This would work perfectly!  I could just sit in the comfort of my office and let someone else tromp through the rain and literally bring me lunch.

But then, as I’m nearing the end of the ordering process, all hell breaks loose.  Apparently this location doesn’t open until freaking 3:45 pm.  Bastards!  This is the last time you will cross me, WingZone, the last time!