A search for significance in an omniscient Internet

From music to blog posts, I fear we may get to a point when it has all been done before.  I reflect on how our all-knowing Internet both informs us of our irrelevance and forever captures our significance.

Youthful revelations: It’s all been done before

I distinctly remember the moment I believed there was nothing new to be done in music.  I was eleven years old on my way to school in the back seat of my sister’s Chevy Impala.  As the land-boat carried us through the autumn Seattle morning, the single dashboard speaker blared Prince, Madonna and Michael Jackson in what I felt was a derivative path towards unsustainable innovation.

OK, so my complaints were more like a younger brother whining about his sister’s taste in AM-only radio stations than a critique on societal conformance.  Yet I recall a distinct feeling that it had all been done before, that there were only so many chorus / verse / bridge combinations, that it was only a matter of months before one poor artist would put pen to sheet music paper only to discover that all original lyrics and music had been used up. I am still unsure if my fears were unjustified youthful ignorance, or if the subsequent genres such as goth-rock, EBM, death metal, nu-metal, and country-pop are simply facades of the same tunes in new packaging.

A caveat to my fear was a question as to how such an artist would realise that his or her original idea had been done before.  How could one individual, or even a larger publishing body, keep track of all music released to ensure that each idea was original? I was consoled back then that such a task was relegated to some omniscient deity.  Almost three decades later, I help build that deity on a daily basis.

Our omniscient Internet deity

Our demand for collecting, cataloguing, and communicating information has both evolved from and driven the technologies to carry out the task.  A path can be traced through aboriginal artwork, books, paper punch tapes and punch cards, magnetic film, electronic cartridges, CD-ROMs, DVDs, Blu-Ray, and hard drives.  Each approach threatens the prior, with film diminishing a need for paintings and CD-ROMs replacing the travelling encyclopaedia salesman.

Fast forward to present day and almost everything can be found on the Internet.  Google has become the fabled oracle, with any question answered to the extent that the site achieved verb status in 2006. Google is a link-sharing metaphor for multiple versions of the Holy Trinity, with the Father, Son and Holy Ghost replaced by personas such as Wikipedia, YouTube, bittorrent aggregators, WikiLeaks, LinkedIn, and countless news and blog sites mixing facts and opinions.

The Internet has become a mass recording device for humanity’s progress or lack-thereof.  Everything ever done or thought in recorded history can be available at our fingertips.  This leads me to question to what extent my contribution becomes a paradox of both irrelevance and significance.

The futility of irrelevance and search for significance

Two years into my blogging habit, I write this post with a sense that it has all been done before.  I am confident the point I am making here has been made by some other pundit in a blog, column, or book available on the Internet.  As soon as I hit publish, my voice is lost in a sea of others who may have been first to market or framed their ideas in a more compelling manner.

And yet, this is my post, my land grab on real estate that has no horizon.  By publishing this article, I have contributed to the record of humanity such that for all time there will be evidence of the views of a General Manager of an Australian-based digital firm in the landscape that is 2011.  The value of my contribution depends upon the capacity for cataloguing, retrieval and comparative analysis of the information, but at least my views are documented until the next evolution of Google, Facebook, Twitter, et all figure out mammoth-scale knowledge management.

Humanity’s recollection aside, my posts also represent a testimony of my own journey.  The value of my ponderings depend on the extent that I have achieved or will achieve significance as I stand on either side of forty years on this planet.    The degree to which thought is considered derivative is based upon the perceived greatness of the individual at the time the thought is considered and the ability of the thought to be executed into practical action.  Put another way, my thoughts will become significant when my actions prove significance, or I will achieve significance when my thoughts become significant.

It hasn’t all been done before until I have done it

Like the proverbial snowflake, no two people are exactly the same.  The variations in DNA expressed through personalities, strengths, tastes, and cultures are near infinite when considering the brief time spans we have on this Earth.  There is nothing new under the sun, but we keep adding our own flavours to make it distinct enough to keep things interesting.

I still struggle with thoughts I held as an eleven year old boy, wondering what will happen when it has all been done before.  I am grateful for our all-knowing Internet god to advise when we have reached that point.  I suspect, however, that we will not achieve that magic moment until I have done it all myself.  I think we might have a few years left.