I was just reading a post by Michael Masnick at Techdirt were he was taking up the subject of abundance and how as a society we are unprepared to deal with that concept. His jumping off point was a recent statement by Clay Shirky who said

Abundance breaks more things than scarcity does. Society knows how to react to scarcity.

Now I’m not going to really argue the point with either gentlemen as high-flatulent as they are especially since this area of warm and fuzzy is their bailiwick. However this idea of abundance because of the Web and its affect on our society got me to thinking.

You see as nice as these intellectual thoughts are from people like Michael and Clay I wonder what kind of abundance they are talking about because really when you look around the Web all we are seeing is an increasing amount of boring same ol’, same ol’, … crap.

Just because you can produce literally unlimited copies of something doesn’t make it good or worth anything.

Just look around and seriously look at what all this abundance is supposedly bring to our lives. Endless streams of hen-party chatter on Twitter. Endless time-sucking (laughable) social games on Facebook. Lousy television shows that are just a carry-over from those idiot boxes in the living-room. A never ending diarrhea of regurgitated news and opinion.

Yup, this abundance thing is the best thing that has happen to us; or is it?

Just because you can push the cost of access to almost zero doesn’t make something better because more people can read, listen or use something. It just makes it easier to find yourself drowning in more and more – crap.