A True Online Innovation

Certain memes have developed currency in the past couple of decades. The woman shouting at the cat, the baby with the clenched fist, the man with his girlfriend turning round to look admiringly at another woman. The fact that almost everyone reading this will instantly know what I am referring to, indicates how these pieces of visual shorthand have become part of our shared experience. These memes are almost certainly unique in that they are the only true point of difference between the very largely offline world of the 20th century and the very largely online world of the 20th century.

This blog post I am writing is like the diary people kept for centuries where they transcribed their thoughts, their hopes and their fears. Anything that came into their minds could be written down. So far, so similar.  Of course, most diaries were not shared with anyone else whereas a blog is designed to be shared with as many people as possible, but the principle is the same.

News used to, and for some still does, come in the form of printed papers. The fact that the two are still inextricably linked can be seen by the number of articles which appear in both versions. Of course, online news is constantly being updated. Actually, that’s not quite true, online news like the abomination that is 24 hour news is nothing more than clueless self important journalists gossiping in real time! It’s the worst thing that has ever happened to public discourse and I will never change in that opinion.

Word and Excel (other versions are available) are incredibly powerful but they are simply updated versions of older technology. AI is simply a version of advice that can be useful and can be anything but, like advice from any human being!

So, we return to my initial premise. The humble meme is genuinely the only innovation that exists in the online world and nowhere else. That’s got to create a reaction!!