Whatever happened to the “World” Wide Web?

iS500_Delta100EI200DD-X-007, originally uploaded by Ian Tindale.

The observation:

Increasingly, one encounters a certain phenomenon in online publishing: a tendency to communicate assuming that the author's entire audience is in the same sort of vicinity as their own local neighbourhood. That is, an underlying assumption that they are all familiar with the same products and trade marks as the author, speak the same colloquialisms, know the same people in the news, share the same formative memories of popular culture, use exactly the same currency and even share the same values. This irrational behaviour, I find, peaks with the most audacious assumption - that it is simply not necessary to even mention which country the author is writing from - at all. Sometimes, of course, it is simply not necessary. In many cases, however, it is utterly necessary in order to contextualise much of the 'furniture' of the message that the author is attempting to convey.

The typical case seems to be one in which the reader starts to consume the article and increasingly finds themselves at best unconsciously irritated or discomforted, and at worst, alienated, by what they read. As the consumption progresses, it dawns on the reader that they are reading something written not for a world audience, but for a quite local region - a select boundary - and with no indication that this was the case. References are broken, disconnected and lacking in context, experiences that were probably intended to be shared, are not formed in that way.

The result is likened to one of encountering someone with no manners, no grace, and no particular care for the comfort of their reader. A brash, unaccommodating and small-minded person - perhaps unaware of the world at large. Surely this isn't the case, but that's what it seems like to the audience. This is the feeling that one is left with, and I would propose, largely unconsciously - no matter how much conscious adaptation, adjustment and rationalisation occurs.

The problem:

The problem is that authors are increasingly subjecting widely-situated audiences to an unconsciously uncomfortable experience (perhaps unwittingly, but nevertheless, the alienation is not attractive, it is repellant, even if only to a minor degree). Objectively, this is pretty much the opposite of what good communication should be about, and it might be noticed to be an increasingly prevalent trend. It's a bad experience on behalf of the reader, and in turn it's a problem for the author if they're inadvertently installing alienating feelings in their readers. So what is the solution?

Solution specification:

Obviously one can't simply fight back each time, pointing out the error of the ways of the author for not remembering that they are publishing on the World Wide Web. Obviously one can't successfully impose a set of rules or etiquette - what if someone ignores it, or doesn't like being told what to do. Such measures would always be too overt, too conscious, and too total in intent. It might result in politeness, but might instead result in even greater rudeness.

There needs to be a way of inducing people to communicate for an audience that consists of the world (even if only the English-speaking world for those that are writing in the languages that English-speaking people understand). There needs to be a means to remind people that they are authors in the act of publishing - an action that 20 years ago was relatively expensive, intentional and laborious, with nowhere near the wide reach and immediacy offered by today's publishing channels - and that responsibility for what is freely published rests on the author's shoulders.

I haven't got a solution - all I've done is identify a fairly concrete phenomena. If there were a solution, it'd be along the lines of a 'global manners' ethos, I'd hazard a guess, whereupon it becomes a bit socially un-cool to speak from a local, regional, boundary-evident stance when one is knowingly addressing the entire world but not accommodating this aspect. I don't know. I don't know if it can be done, how it can be done, and even if it should be done this way. I don't know.