The other day I made the comment that the Internet is much unlike other media in the way that it is accessible to more people than ever and that you can publish text, images, and video much easier than the past. In the past, you had to get accepted by publishers for text and studios for video. Now, everyone is able to publish and get their voice heard.
And then Dr. Mike asked, "Do they really?"
At first, I thought, "Well, of course! What kind of argument is 'Do they really?' anyway?" But it wasn't really an argument, it was rhetorical question that my confirmation bias kept me from finding the truth of the matter. No one else in class seemed to care, and we passed by it pretty quickly.
But now that question is gnawing at me. "Do they really?" It's like a Zen riddle.
I guess what we need to take into account is that with a million voices making up the static of discourse in the internet, is your voice really heard? Who outside of the class is reading this blog? Probably no one. We still have a gap between the static of information on the internet and the websites and users that get the most views.
YouTube is a great demonstration of this fact. There's no filter (other than the guidelines against violence, sex, and other inappropriate things), and there's a lot of low quality videos on the video portal. However, only a select few probably get more than 100,000 views on each of their videos, and even less get paid to do so.
Does that make my point invalid though? Although only a few select people get views and get paid for it, it's ultimately the collective of the internet that decided that these channels are worth watching and viewing. Sadly, this means the lowest common denominator determines a great deal of what is given the most attention.
What does this mean for the future of our society as we have more generations born into the internet? It's too late to tell right now of course, but in order to keep from falling into the pit of intellectual despair, we need to keep our minds open. We need to explore our resources. We need to stop paying attention to the content that gives us no meaning and become perpetual students, never satisfied with unanswered questions.
I agree with you, but I think the point he is trying to make is that while it is technically considered "public" how public is it really if no one reads it?
ReplyDeleteI think the issue that scares me the most is the amount of information on the internet that is growing at an exponential rate. Anyone can publish anywhere and at anytime. Here is the difficult question: should everyone be able to post whatever they want on the internet, whether it's true or useful or not? This is a tricky line because who gets to say what is true and what isn't? Who has the authority to say what is useful and what isn't? I don't remember the exact number, but every minute there is a scary amount of information being added to the internet. Can you imagine what that will look like in ten years? Someone is going to have to sift through all that information and crap and figure what should be more available to the common population. The internet is a sea of information and if we aren't careful we are going to drown in it.
I think it's up to the reader to determine what's true and what isn't, and what is just plain stupidity. There seems to be a lot of it on the internet and it's pretty irritating. But in this way, the internet is like any other form of publishing; one must sort out the truth from the idiocy...Although, due to the fact that the internet is largely uncensored, there seems to be more crap than, say, in books.
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