Another lucid and intelligent blog with which I find myself disagreeing in every particular.

"Questions of its purpose, utility and effect are puzzling sociologists, CEOs and communications strategists alike." Well quite, as none of these people predicted the creation, never mind the huge success of social networking sites and had nothing to do wtih their huge spontaneous popularity, one wonders why it's thought they would have anything useful to say about the phenomena at all. People like to talk to their friends and trade with everyone else and have done since we were living in caves, the internet doesn't change human nature anymore than the invention of writing or the telephone invented our essentially social primate nature.

The mass revolt last week on Facebook, which saw fifty thousand people sign a petition against the automatic tracking of their purchases being used to 'recommend' those products to their friends, and the humiliating climb down by the site's owners which followed showed how people resent everything they do in their personal life being seen as a chance for some company to 'expand its economic function'. The vast valuations of sites like Facebook will last exactly as long as someone takes to try to realise them in terms of hard cash.

What some people call 'noise' is actually what most people use the internet for. It's the 'noise' of messenger chats, youtube videos and postings on big brother forums which are its essence, rather than a perversion of some higher ideal. The idea that the internet should have some higher purpose is as silly as thinking fiction or pop music should rise above the noise of gossip and garish entertainment. Ten dollars buys a copy of the Australian Woman's Weekly or a volume of Spinoza, it's clear which sells the most on any given day. As for the Internet being an unreliable source of information, one of the strengths of the vast power of the net is that the endless lies, mistakes and biases of the mainstream media get shown up today in hours where they would seldom be uncovered before. Ask Dan Rather about the power of the 'electronic grapevine'. The quality of information avaliable today on the net, as well as the quantity of it, is vastly higher than every before for those who want to access it. It's not being diluted, the exact opposite in fact. Yes, there's a huge amount of drivel on the net too, but that just reflects the fact that most people talk nonsense most of the time. Ever heard anyone give the Gettysburg Address over their mobile phone? Ever wondered why that taxi driver with the answer to everything is driving a taxi, rather than running a Government ministry? To complain about content on the net is to complain about human nature and efforts to tidy that up usually end up with the digging of very big holes in Siberia.

As for "The challenge, of course, is how to rescue the process of providing (and sourcing) valuable, reliable and reputable information from the clutches of commercial imperatives that the rise of social media is placing before us ", well, isn't that a 'problem' which has been clearly solved, for instance by the success of Wikipedia? An peer related commons of volunteers has spontaneously created the largest and most popular encyclopedia in history out of nothing, for nothing, in just a handful of years and there's not an advert, government committee or 'communications strategist' to be seen. If there had been any of those things, of course, it wouldn't exist as nobody would give their time freely to a commercial operation, a committee would still be discussing the fine print of subsection six and a communications strategist would be busy pointing out how impossible it was in theory, even though it's clearly a huge success in practise.

There is absolutely no need whatsover for anyone to 'negotiate this transiation'. Ordinary people have quite happily done that themselves over the past few years, in which the internet has gone from something no futurist even dreamed of to an every day part of most people's lives. People vote with their time and attention every time they click on a site or choose not to visit it again. People value high quality information so sources which provide it will recieve hits, and therefore advertising revenue, while those who provide poor content will not. Most blogs are rubbish, get no hits and quickly die. The good ones succeed simply because they are good. On a wider scale, commercial imperitives are the engine which will drive the provison of high quality information, they are not its enemies. What else is a free press? Would you argue that newspapers, which aim in the end to make a profit, should be regulated regarding their content because of that?

The joy of the internet is that such huge amounts of content are provided for free because, well WH Auden said it best but I won't repeat his observation here, while the more commerical sites are paid for by advertising which nobody sees because everyone uses Firefox with adblock and flashblock. It doesn't need planning, it doesn't need strategists, nobody in the past predicted what the internet is now, and nobody can predict what it'll be in five years time. It's a perfect example of Adam Smith's observation that all an economic system needs to thrive is the division of labour, free trade and the pursuit of self interest. The invisible hand which built the internet is doing just fine by itself.

To sum up, there is no "social task" to be undertaken, it's a problem which doesn't exist - although that won't stop people who don't understand it trying to get grants to help them fail to solve it while eating very nice lunches indeed. The idea of "L’art pour l’art" has destroyed painting and serious music over the last century but "La communication pour la communication" is the whole point of it. Communication creates social bonds and social bonds are what we depend on. A friend is someone you talk to, it doesn't matter at all what you're talking about.