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I still remember the first time data reified into something tangible for me. It was when I was 12, and went on to an R.E.M. fan area (surprise) on Prodigy. I remember it still because there was something freeing about finding others like me regardless of geography, and something intrinsically other-wordly about having a tangible connection with others through text, outside of time, space and demography.

Technology has grown since then (1991), and our perceptions of online identity, communication and participation have likewise evolved. In some cases it is the modality that changed, but the fundamentals remain the same (ie, email, discussion boards). Some things have died (Usenet), new things flourished (video chat) and hybrid versions of the old are reborn — what is Twitter other than finger/plan reborn?

But something is missing.

There was an inherent joy to communication, as little as a year ago. Twitter was fresh, Facebook was less populated. The social networks around blogs and the people behind them was rife with competitiveness as well as a mutual respect.

In the past year though, it’s almost as if we’re on a death spiral toward irrelevance. Half the @replies I now get on Twitter are spam bots. Techmeme is recombinant. The quality of the blogs I read are down hill, either toward unrepentant (and unfounded) snark, or simply republishing work others did for them.

The worst I think was last week with the TED conference. I have been invited to TED, but have never been able to make it for various reasons every year. I think the conference is great (and a good friend works on it), with an aim toward quality of discourse. But this year, something was different. Maybe it is tweets like this, or this.

Smug, elitist, exclusionary and in a climate such as we have today (with half a million loosing their jobs lately), nearly irrelevant. I said on Twitter when TED started, it reminded me of a Wall Street junket in Vegas.

I think the fundamental problem right now, and why I think we all lost the plot in some way lately is that these new forms of communication and collaboration were born out of a desire to decenter our world. There was supposed to be no center, and if one formed, was removed from relevance by the adaptiveness of the network and graph.

The twitters about TED (not TED itself) this year I think are illustrative of the point:

We are overly obsessed with our own cleverness, and ability to enable change, without ever executing it.

The blogosphere, Twitter, parts of Facebook, etc are becoming annoying because of this. A lot of people fetishizing the power to wield toys, talking about the toys without doing anything with them. It’s like so many Nero’s, but not in tune.

I’m guilty of this too. I want to do more to help, to change and to take the tools I use and turn them in a positive direction. I think we all have the best intentions (certainly Evan and Biz at Twitter, Mark at Facebook, the creators of Flickr, Blogger, etc).

I just think we lost the plot of why we do this. All of it.

Before we spend $6,000 on a conference, or label ourselves citizens of a conference, I think we need to find that again.

I know I’m trying to.