Bacon-Relevant Explosions
This morning I had a slice of bacon explosion as part of my breakfast. (It’s delicious, though it’s too salty and needed more barbeque sauce.) Turns out two of our chefs got their hands on the New York Times article on the same subject and decided to make it themselves. It wasn’t hard to acquire the material since they were already planning on feeding 200 people bacon, a large smoker for smoking large meats and they had some buckets of sawdust sitting around.
When the first person brought the NYT article to my attention (because they know I like bacon) I really didn’t want to let them down. They were so excited to share this “news” with me despite that fact that I’ve learned about it since the day the guys who made the first one posted the recipe online. The New York Times was about a week late.
How do I even begin to explain to someone who has lived in rural Vermont for years and not used to technology the concept of Web 2.0 social news? Would you believe me, fifteen years ago, that I have made a pact with 4516 other people around the world that we would send each other any remotely interesting bit of news about bacon? That we would mail each other recipes, health articles, photographs and art concerning smoked meat within minutes of discovering it ourselves? That we would sort through the thousands of articles that we forward each other and organize and evaluate them so that, if one of us is busy, we only have to read the best stories concerning bacon that day? Even crazier: I can get the newest bacon stories almost in real time! I can have a gadget play a song of triumph every time a new bacon recipe is sent to me; or I can save them up and read them at the end of the day.
And it doesn’t end with bacon. Every day millions of other people around the globe are sending me interesting articles and news tailored to my preferences. If reading about politics makes me angry I can simply ignore all the political articles with one click of a button. If I want to cheer myself up I’ll make sure I look at the most adorable photograph of a cat available on the Internet (as chosen by thousands of people who love pictures of cats) before going into world news or the day’s funniest comics. I can find out about a piece of educational technology the day its specifications are released to the public and start thinking about how to use it in the classroom years before it hits the manufacturing phrase. And none of the information I have in front of me is irrelevant because it’s been presorted by thousands of people. The only price I have to pay is that I have to accept the bias of this group of people—and I’d rather accept the bias of a mob who wants to share knowledge than that of a cable television company—and to fulfill my implicit contract of taking part in the enterprise. If I find something awesome, I will send it to everyone; if I feel strongly about a news item I will moderate it. Both very small prices to pay to access the collective informational gathering capacity of thousands of people.
And this is why I have not read a newspaper in years.
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Haha. Definitely a good analysis.