The internet has expanded our local context—which, given the nature of context, has meant that it has eliminated a lot of context; it’s easier to find a group of people like you, who have your interests, but a side effect of this, which I think hasn’t gotten much attention yet, is that it has become increasingly difficult to feel like you’re good at the things you have an interest in.
I’ve been thinking about the same thing recently: In a group/village of tens to hundreds of people, it’s reasonable for everyone to have some talent at which they’re the best in the group. In a society of thousands or tens of thousands, it’s not unreasonable to aspire to become the best in the known world at some particular specialty. With the internet, one has to be one in several billion to be “the best”. So as the group gets larger, our subjective place in the hierarchy decreases.
Conversely, there seems to be an effect where it’s reasonably easy to emulate a teacher or role model to reach a certain fraction of that person’s skill at a task, but harder to surpass them. I notice this when I compare my skills to those of my parents: the way that I use the internet allows me to confidently undertake many tasks that my parents would hire an expert for, from filing certain paperwork to repairing my home’s plumbing, because the internet lets me effectively study under experts in those fields for a few weeks to ramp up to an adequate knowledge level in a hurry. So while our subjective skill level decreases, our objective skill level increases from the improved availability of information.
I’ve been thinking about the same thing recently: In a group/village of tens to hundreds of people, it’s reasonable for everyone to have some talent at which they’re the best in the group. In a society of thousands or tens of thousands, it’s not unreasonable to aspire to become the best in the known world at some particular specialty. With the internet, one has to be one in several billion to be “the best”. So as the group gets larger, our subjective place in the hierarchy decreases.
Conversely, there seems to be an effect where it’s reasonably easy to emulate a teacher or role model to reach a certain fraction of that person’s skill at a task, but harder to surpass them. I notice this when I compare my skills to those of my parents: the way that I use the internet allows me to confidently undertake many tasks that my parents would hire an expert for, from filing certain paperwork to repairing my home’s plumbing, because the internet lets me effectively study under experts in those fields for a few weeks to ramp up to an adequate knowledge level in a hurry. So while our subjective skill level decreases, our objective skill level increases from the improved availability of information.