NOTE: This is Chapter 18 of my online book. Enjoy.
Remember when a certain politician “took the initiative in creating the Internet“? Neither do I. But it must have been an auspicious day. Ignorance would be forever banished to dusty history books, or to creaky hard drives, or to wayback snapshots in that strange neverland soon to be known as “the cloud”. Going forward, perfect information would enable perfect markets, optimal outcomes, the end of all disease, constructive dialogue, and peace and justice for all. And pets.com would change the world.
Well, so much for that.
The internet has had its moments, certainly. A few companies have changed the world, just not exactly as pundits imagined in the beginning. Nobody really anticipated the near demise of separate “shipping and handling” fees, or the reality of one or two day deliveries. Or that we could suddenly reconnect with our former lives every day without sounding creepy (in theory, anyway). Few people understood that the era of CDs and DVDs and over-the-air broadcasting would soon end without fanfare, effectively if not in toto. And almost no one was prepared for the day when you could have natural language conversations with anonymous machines, sci-fi style. The era of the omnipresent personal assistant & tutor arrived much sooner than expected.
I like to call these things the Internet of People. That internet has delivered a lot of value to humanity. That internet lets us stay in touch with old friends and maintain cordial, edifying relationships. Sure, a few of those friends become conspiracy-toting wackos or dystopian re-inventors of human ontology; this is unavoidable, statistically speaking. But more often than not, it is gratifying to see that good ol’ Albert the antisocial nugget from elementary school became an interesting, productive member of society. In this way, the Internet of People often delivers a kind of reassurance, a faith in humanity at the operational level.
And then there’s the Internet of Memes. This is the internet that lets people hide behind the pale of tribal defenses, free to lob virtual artillery shells from an infinite assembly line without apparent cost or risk. The burgeoning digital civilization that we found in the Internet of People would soon be erased by a kind of digital warfare, powered by half truths, cheap shots and data-munching Trojan horses. Yay.
The Internet of Memes started harmlessly enough. A purloined joke here. A sappy platitude there — mostly the work of bored, older relatives. All forgivable. These things happen. They are why God made eyes that roll. The transformation began in earnest in the early 2010’s, as entrepreneurs began to explore the possibilities of maturing social networks. It was a time when young college graduates, ambitious with worldly itches, moved to internet media hotbeds in search of virtual fulfillment. They sought career kickstarters in bold new realms, leaving behind the relic businesses that make most of the bacon in their home towns. Internet 2.0 would be a land where content is king. They wanted to generate new ideas, better ideas -- ideas that would never marinate in the minds of stoic home town business owners sporting receding hairlines or mom jeans.
And so they signed up, churning out slick video snippets that caught eyeballs for Big Data. Thanks to this clarion call for content, the consumer internet — that grand aggregator of eyeballs — soon became a fireworks display: a spectacle of hot, sparkly ideas that shine brightly for a brief time but quickly fade to forgotten ash. A decade later, that influential era evolved into TikTok, which set its roots in the soil built by these early meme factories, and showed the world how to attract eyeballs at an obscene scale.
It doesn’t take the magic of the much-acclaimed TikTok algorithm to figure out that I am a gardener. Long before super-sophisticated algorithms subjugated us, Big Data’s wondrous sorting machine had already dissected my inner essences. So it was no surprise that many of the temptations it tossed my way were targeted at my soil-loving side. Around that time, one of these countless ideas arrived in the form of a warm, upbeat and inspiring video. This particular video argued that I have labored for decades under a delusion about ice cream cones, of all things. To clarify, I refer not to cones already filled with ice cream, nor to fancy, newfangled cones made of cookie dough and pralines and repurposed broken pretzel bits. No, I’m talking about the proletariat of ice cream containers, the “no surcharge” cone, the only cone that I knew as a kid – the venerable wafer cone.
Full disclosure: I am a big fan of wafer cones. I grant that this affection is, at least partially, a ritual burnishing of childhood memories to an unearned sheen. You might argue that such delusions die hard; but I would counter that many shiny legends are rooted in the rich soil of truth. Whatever the roots, I remain a devotee. Wafer cones complete ice cream like rye bread completes a Reuben. Oh, sure, those fancy-pants waffle cones can be a nice change of pace, especially if you are going for the medium rather than the small. But that is uncommon in these latter days of girth control and life without a gall bladder. I remain an unapologetic champion of the sturdy and dependable wafer cone.
So it is time to resurrect the lede of this tale from its early grave. According to the hot new idea from the content machine on that day, I should be viewing my venerable wafer cones not as exquisitely engineered vessels for the single most important dessert item in the industrialized world (with due respect to brownie lovers), but as plant pots -- as in, places to sprout seeds in soil.
Oh my. Full stop. Big sigh. I can feel the waves of sacrilege precipitating from this tainted tonic of eyeball soup. And I appoint myself chief inquisitor to quell the heresy.
Maybe you have heard of peat pots. I am not a fan. Peat pots are what their name suggests – plant pots stamped out of pressed peat (and, I imagine, other natural fiber). The theory is that you don’t need to remove seedlings from such pots, and can instead put the plant in the ground, pot and all, when the time comes. As the theory goes, this is easier and reduces transplant shock. And that’s probably true sometimes. But innovators often ignore the downsides of their fancy ideas. For the record, I like to think of myself as more “realist” than president of the local cynics club, but I won’t quibble with terminology. Someone must appease the reality god, lest we sacrifice ourselves to impossible dreams and broken hearts.
As with many sexy, heart-breaking things in life, the headaches with peat pots reveal themselves over time, but are ultimately hard to miss. All seems well at first. You fill them with soil, plant some seeds, and happy little plants emerge. You put them in a tray with water, which they absorb efficiently. Early relationship bliss sets in. It all seems so right. Then days pass and you begin to notice little white spots on the sides. You suspect that your beloved peat pots are having an affair with mold spores, but the denial instinct is strong. Then the spots grow more spots, and the evidence become undeniable. And you have no real recourse except hope. But even if you avoid the mold, you won’t escape the next malady.
As the theory goes, you will begin to see little roots emerge through the walls, signaling that it is time to transplant. Well, let’s hope the weather outside agrees; if it does not, you are stuck with seedlings with roots emerging into the air — which is like your nose emerging into quicksand. But let’s assume that your timing is amazing, and the plant and weather situations converge perfectly. In the real world of average garden soil, the walls of a peat pot do not dissolve instantly, and young plant roots do not penetrate them like a hot knife through butter. In fact, sometimes you can still see the peat pot at the end of the growing season, when you clean up the garden beds for the winter. You discover that, rather than decomposing, the pot mostly just got in the way. Sure, some roots made it through, but the plant struggled mightily — and unnecessarily — all season. In the end, this relationship’s struggles simmered under the surface, and the whole affair went nowhere.
So what does all this have to do with ice cream cones? Ideally, nothing. But when the meme’s the thing rather than the idea it advocates, the tragedy can sometimes be Shakespearean. The video suggested that you can use wafer cones like peat pots. Clearly, the creator did not know or care that using peat pots as peat pots isn’t the best idea. And so it took only one very hollow epiphany — and one grand leap into meme space — to inject empty potential into a desolate void. Like the pieces in an M.C. Escher gallery, everything is possible when reality is virtual. Back in the real world, thousands of gardeners probably tried this. And they and their ice cream-loving kids were disappointed. Because the real world knows nothing of the ash abandoned by internet fireworks displays.
Whether borne of ignorance or necessity, the world teems with misuse. When I was a kid, my dad inadvertently taught me all sorts of bad lessons. One of those was how to misuse tools. I never quite understood this, as he was the son of a plumber, and a plumber himself in his younger days. But sometimes a pipe wrench seems like a good hammer, and sometimes a screw driver looks like a pry bar. And sometimes food seems like a good way to make fuel for cars …or flower pots. The internet is a tool too, itself prone to abuse. Perhaps someday we will understand that social networks are not the place to spew unrestrained political venom. And that generative artificial intelligence is more thief than artist. And someday we might recoil in horror at the milieu of misleading memes that clogged our digital lives.
I think we can agree that filling a wafer cone with potting soil isn’t the end of the world (unless you are a young tomato plant, or a five year-old with dreams of ice cream after dinner). But, over time, such attitudes beget broader permission structures. Before you know it, you find yourself behind a desk, generating creative misinformation for a living rather than improving lives with your finite supply of youthful energy. Tools are a blessing. We depend on them for our existence, and humans are astonishingly good at creating them. Tools sustain and improve our lives every minute of every day. Some respect and gratitude is warranted.
Respect the blessings in your life for what they are designed to do.
Chapter 19 - (Coming Soon!)