The Stream and the Rocks

Back in 2009, Erick Schonfeld, an editor at TechCrunch wrote:
“Information is increasingly being distributed and presented in real-time streams instead of dedicated Web pages. The shift is palpable, even if it is only in its early stages.”
That’s pretty much what Twitter and Facebook have done:
“The stream is winding its way throughout the Web and organizing it by nowness.”
Brian Eno describes the stream thus:
“The right word is 'unfinished.'...Permanently unfinished.”
Or as Alexis Madrigal writes:
“No matter how hard you sprint for the horizon, it keeps receding. There is always something more.”

Madrigal explains why this trend has exploded since 2009:
“In a world of infinite variety, it's difficult to categorize or even find, especially before a thing has been linked. So time, newness, began to stand in for many other things.”

But Madrigal feels the trend is now reversing. Why? Because more and more people now feel overwhelmed by the never-ending stream of updates they get:
“It is too damn hard to keep up. And most of what's out there is crap.”
And it gets worse:
“While the stream flows quickly past you, it flows into the vast, searchable reservoirs of companies and intelligence agencies. This stream is archived and data mined! On the Internet stream, you cannot keep up with the stream, but the stream can keep up with you.”
One response has been the coming of the “disappearing stream” apps (that’s ephemeral content for you) like Snapchat.

And then there’s the growing feeling “that there are values beyond newness”. That is why newsletters and sites like Medium have grown in popularity. Here’s how Madrigal describes this new trend:
“These sites traffic in narrative porn. The whole point of their posts is that they are idealized stories with a beginning, middle, and end. They provide closure. They are rocks that you can stand on in the stream, just to catch your breath.”

Madrigal’s hope for the future of the web?
“Let's just let the web be the web again, a network of many times, not just now.”
Amen to that.

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