The Gentrification of the Interwebs
From NYTimes Mag:
People who find the Web distasteful — ugly, uncivilized — have nonetheless been forced to live there: it’s the place to go for jobs, resources, services, social life, the future. But now, with the purchase of an iPhone or an iPad, there’s a way out, an orderly suburb that lets you sample the Web’s opportunities without having to mix with the riffraff. This suburb is defined by apps from the glittering App Store: neat, cute homes far from the Web city center, out in pristine Applecrest Estates. In the migration of dissenters from the “open” Web to pricey and secluded apps, we’re witnessing urban decentralization, suburbanization and the online equivalent of white flight.
So we’ve reported on the supposed “tangledness” of the net before, but this is a slightly different observation. With the recent release of the iPad and the upcoming iPhone 4G, apps are the hot new thing these days. And since Big Brother Apple has to approve all apps before they go in to the iTunes Store, sure, there’s more “security” in apps than the open web.
Hmmmm, but now we’re gonna need a metaphor to explain this concept to the people that still read magazines. Luckily, Virginia Heffernan taps in to another hot topic for NYCers: the gentrification of modern American cities.
The parallels between what happened to cities like Chicago, Detroit and New York in the 20th century and what’s happening on the Internet since the introduction of the App Store are striking. Like the great modern American cities, the Web was founded on equal parts opportunism and idealism…
But a kind of virtual redlining is now under way. The Webtropolis is being stratified. Even if, like most people, you still surf the Web on a desktop or laptop, you will have noticed pay walls, invitation-only clubs, subscription programs, privacy settings and other ways of creating tiers of access.
Out with the unpredictable, criminal, crack dens and creativity and in with the white people, boutiques and safety!
With the gentrification metaphor comes the idea that this phenomenon of walled online communities taking over the open web is plottable on like, a map. We here at The ## have taken a shot at mapping the blogosphere before, but again this project seems slightly different.
We could mash the tenor and the vehicle of the metaphor, asking whether one can blog about cool shit from a not-cool address. It’s true that most hip “gossip” blogs have offices between Houston and Canal streets, while print mags and papers are more in midtown.
But I digress. What’s important to take away from the gentrification metaphor is that there are pros and cons of the rise of walled communities both IRL and on the web. Sure, I don’t have to worry about getting a virus on my iPhone from downloading an app, but Apple must be wary of depriving us of future 18-year-olds who will tinker around and change the world.
UPDATE: Our friend Joe Coscarelli weighs in, looking at race and the Internet.
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