We talked today about why it's important that we know who the major players are in digital literacy. Government and business all concerned with how people are consuming and processing information they receive. Sarah posted a blog last week about how the internet offers equal opportunities in posting information and opinions online. Even in Wikipedia, anybody with an internet connection can go onto the website and edit articles to their heart's content, with or without citation. While this level playing field can be a good example of the First Amendment, that doesn't mean that information-devouring web surfers should be swallowing everything they read.
It's hard to think of our society as a series of robots, who are being fed information and processing it as truth, just like computers when they are built. Because we are human beings, and therefore are able to think, process, and form our own opinions, some may not want to accept that out of mental sloth, we are willing to accept opinions as FACT. There are man people who subscribe to a specific political party or title, who are listening to the words of their leaders and decided that because that is the opinion of their party, that is also their personal opinion. It scares me how easily some Americans can be so easily swayed by the power of oratory in this country. The automation of the internet and its vast cesspool of opinion and here-say is having a similar effect.
Now, the end of the Web 2.0 makes me think on a whole new level, especially near the end, where it makes the statement that we are going to have to do a lot of rethinking, especially ourselves. And that means, I think, the reexamination of how we process information, not only by receiving it, but decided what it means to us and whether or not we agree.
I'm going to go Inception on you:
ReplyDeleteIf we are able to form our own opinions, where does that knowledge come from? How do we form our own opinions? Were we born with preset notions of where we stand on that fine line of right/wrong?
Our "opinions" are socially conditioned through the world around us. We decide who to believe based on other opinions already decided upon based on the information received from other sources.
It would be dangerous to think that there are sources that our unbiased. Nothing is unbiased. My journal, not meant for anyone except me, is riddled with biases because even in my private journal I want to be viewed a certain way. Even a single word choice is a conscious/unconscious decision to portray myself in a certain way.
That being said, how does the internet allow us to form our own opinions? I think it is useful that we can take the biases from different viewpoints and weigh them against our own ideas, which the internet does indeed provide.