Here Comes Every Voice

I kind of feel like I keep repeating myself when I write these posts because they often revolve around the shortsightedness of "the establishment" and the democratizing effects of technology. And chapters 4 through 6 of Here Comes Everybody continues that trend, but in the context of a more unified goal.

These three chapters, specifically four and five, focus on user-generated content and how it is replacing or at the very least supplementing content generated by the traditional producers who typically have power. As that producer/consumer balance shifts, it seems like individuals are gaining more power and ability to influence the world. In chapter four, Shirky largely talks about Myspace, but I feel like that example could be applied to any blog that focuses on community/user generated posts/feedback. He notes larger blogs, but those seem to be less interesting than individual or small community generated content. I feel like those larger blogs are just reinterpretations/remediations of traditional newspapers, magazines, and television. Although these large online media sources are pulling power away from the physical/broadcast sources, they're outnumbered and potentially less effective than these smaller zones. I say this because these larger blogs may be approached with the same skepticism and disdain associated with traditional media. Smaller bloggers seem to have a sense of more intimacy and truthfulness and as a result may be shared and spread amongst friends more readily and undermine broader communication methods.

With these groups and tools in place, we now have the opportunity to actually influence the world around us and force change in other arenas that we would not have with these singular, but loosely organized mini-broadcasters that seem to be cropping up as more and more people explore the less restrictive online space.

Dwindling Expertise?

The first three chapters of Shirky's Here Comes Everybody heavily focus on the idea of do it yourself (DIY) like movements and actions that have been enabled by the web. In chapters one and two, Shirky heavily relies on the example of Ivanna's lost/stolen Sidekick and how the backend technology associated with the phone gave Ivanna the means to become a kind of private investigator or police officer and track down who may have had her phone. Additionally, her friend Evan and his understanding of the web gave the both of them the tools to then pin point who had the phone and determine the best course of action to take.

The story of Evan and Ivanna's search for the phone and some sort of justice outside the realm of the rules and restrictions of the physical world help highlight what chapter three seemed to start covering and that was the diminishing necessity of "experts" and even the potential for amateurs to supplant experts thanks to the distributed resources and inexpensive tools that the web affords. In chapter 3, on page 61 specifically, Shirky uses the example of amateur bloggers to demonstrate how the Net Generation has used these factors of increased access and inexpensive/powerful tools to undermine, yet indirectly support traditional journalist/experts.

The journalists, due to being jaded or part of the "system," missed or ignored comments made by a public official, Trent Lott, at a birthday party for a Strom Thurmond, whose early political career was founded on segregation. Outside the context of Thurmond's past, the comment simply seems to be a kind comment for a friend or revered colleague and the traditional journalists largely seemed to take it as that. However, a network of amateur bloggers noted that the comment seemed to advocate segregation and racism when one considered the context of Thurmond's career. Traditional journalists didn't have the time or "bandwidth" to pore of Lott's comments, but the "amateur" bloggers were able to do this.

As a result of a combination of resources, knowledge, and fervor, the bloggers commented enough on this seemingly innocuous line that it became a worthwhile news item for the traditional media. Blogger interest in this piece not only brought the issue to the attention of the traditional media, but also revealed other distasteful aspect's of Lott's persona/character that had cropped up in the past.

Consumerism

Consumption and the Net Generation becomes quite an odd topic because according to Tapscott, we’re more distanced from the traditional modes of product advertisement (unsubstantiated claims of quality, repetition, product placement, etc), but there seem to be more avenues that create deeper connections with Net Geners. No longer is someone just limited to putting the message out there as often as possible and hoping people listen to it, but now advertisers can actually engage at a much closer level with individual consumers and it is those companies who tend to build credibility with the Net Generation.

I think this is true and I can relate this to an experience I recently had. It’s odd because it simultaneously bolsters and contradicts some of the shopping norms Tapscott notes. It runs a bit contradictory to the Integrity norm because I personally experienced how HEAVILY companies moderate their reviews. Although Tapscott argues that no amount of spin can sway the net generation, if the company controls the pipeline, they can make things appear however they want, so their spin works by default within that context. However, Tapscott discusses this issue outside of the company’s space, but when shopping user reviews on shopping sites , whether owned by the manufacturer or not, are considered to be fair and accurate. This could also play into Tapscott’s norm because the company realizes the power of user commentary on their products. At any rate, I purchased a hoodie over a year ago and put it in the closet within a month or so because the seams started to inexplicably come apart and pocket separated from the inside of the hoodie which effectively created a hole in the pocket. Anyway, I recently came across the hoodie again and since I never contacted customer service, I figured that I would at least let people know about the quality issues I encountered. Within hours of posting my negative review, I received an e-mail informing me that my review had been reviewed and was not posted because the company would like to see what they could do to “make things right.” After a series of e-mails, I received a brand new hoodie in the mail just because the company didn’t want the five star rating on their product to take a hit.  This also plays into Tapscott’s speed norm.

And this leads to the Collaboration norm. Although I knew and still know that their main aim was to keep their rating/reputation for the product high (in order to maintain the norms of integrity and scrutiny), they reached out to me and asked for additional feedback so they could make sure to change their processes/design in an effort to make sure this has been resolved or doesn’t continue to happen. Again, I know that this is more or less a move to placate me so I don’t run down their product elsewhere, just like with traditional customer service; however, they positioned their inquiries using this norm in order to engage me and make it feel like I was part of their quality improvement process and was actually making things better. This not only got me to send more feedback than I would have otherwise, but I also felt more inclined to let them make things right rather than just writing them off

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So, this greatly changes the accountability companies have to individual consumers and vice versa. Consumers are willing to  completely write off companies if they’re willing to write off an individual consumer or issue. However, companies currently and will increasingly work with instead of in opposition to customers in order to ensure they can gain more access than their competitors. Thanks to the easy access to other purchasing options and alternate sources of opinions about product XYZ, the entire consumer-producer relationship is more evenly balanced than ever before.

Expertise

In the early pages of part two of Grown Up Digital, Tapscott explores the shifting relationship between student and teacher when Internet and web resources are thrown into the equation. This is a fascinating discussion because it not only reflects what is going on right now and where things are headed, but also completely changes who or what we consider an expert.

Traditionally, teachers are considered experts in the classes they lead; however, with online resources anyone who understands the fundamental concepts of a subject may very well be able to use the pool of information that exists in the ether to build upon that foundation and approximate "expert level" knowledge by augmenting things with these digital resources. I don't think this completely changes the role of teachers or experts, but it certainly changes the student/teacher relationship because both are "students" of the digital resources and the teachers are facilitating access, filtering, or remediating that information for the students. I suppose this forces experts to become more expert in using this information rather than just knowing and sharing facts. The building process no longer stops at the expert level; in order to stay ahead of non-experts, experts have to do something with the information they have.

Much like the change from orality to literacy, we're starting to see a change in how information is perceived and used. In fact, one might also be able to argue that we are reverting (not in a bad way) to some of the traditions of oral cultures in the way there could be increased engagement with the author/text on a more direct or immediate level. If we have areas to reach the authors of information online, we directly change that information through our questions. Maybe this is the next step, a return to the core benefits of orality, but in a different context/medium.

What is It?

The idea that “Net Geners” are inherently more skeptical is demonstrates a rather interesting and fundamental shift in the way society does and will approach information in the future. I noticed that there was a fair amount of skepticism about things online and amongst my friends, but I kind of assumed that this was always the case in the post-war era. I guess I’ve always taken the idea that people check things out and do some of their own vetting before believing them for granted.

I suppose since it (Internet, web, digital technology, 100+ channel cable, etc) has been an everyday part of life since my early years of school (maybe even before school), that I never really gave much thought to how people perceived the accuracy of information in previous generations. Of course, there are exceptions to this especially considering the ridiculous hoaxes and internet lore I hear from some friends, but that seems to be a rather small exception. Examples of this would be celebrity deaths and rumors of international happenings. Thinking about it now, if one was to look at most things they heard with disbelief and required verification before the proliferation of the web and other online resources, they’d never get anything done because they’d be making calls and reading endless reams of newspaper daily.

As Tapscott mentions, myself and most of my peers either look for news articles that support or refute the claim or check online hoax databases like Snopes.com. Not only does there seem to be an innate desire to get to the root of something, but the fact that I can check thing XYZ and know an answer within moments is very appealing. Knowing/learning about that one thing might not make me “smarter,” but it certainly makes me feel more clever and aware of what’s going on around me rather than having to rely on one distant authority to share an answer with me when it’s ready to do so. I suppose one might say that having access to that information gives individuals a sense of control or understanding over an increasingly chaotic world.

I can find multiple resource to pin down a more accurate answer on my own schedule. To go back to the title of this post “What is It?,” I kind of remember when the Segway scooter was nearing its launch, but it was only referred to as “It” or “Ginger” (I think). There was all this hype about how tech luminary X (it might have been Apple’s Steve Jobs) reportedly said that It was the greatest thing ever and would change the way cities are designed and it would change how people interact with each other, etc. At the time it seemed like all the tech blogs, news programs, magazines, etc, were ready to jump on this bandwagon and there was little to no skepticism about the whole thing, but my friends and I immediately started looking for alternative sources of information online, which included web forums, patent/trademark documents, etc., that gave some different opinions or information about what the device really was.

We didn’t believe the hype surrounding the device even though we never found any definitive information until after it launched, but we used this incredibly common tool (the web) to try to figure out what was what and sort fact from fiction without the involvement of traditional media.

On the other hand, there are times that I have found myself paradoxically relying on these same traditional sources to confirm or deny information found online. Although the web holds a ton of information that can be used to explore topics at leisure, there are still times when traditional news broadcasts or print media are used to supplement or affirm things found in cyberspace.

It is kind of interesting that although this is the "Net Generation," it feels very much like a hybrid information that relies on both spheres of information.

A Question of Truthiness (Makeup Post)

Both of the authors we've covered up to this point (Ong and Baron) have at least touched if not focused on the truthfulness of written communication in the absence of the author. However, Baron explores the potential the Internet has to instill a sense of honesty or truth back into written communication by giving readers and authors a place to asynchronously interact and challenge/discuss things with one another. He uses the example of Facebook and various profile pages to examine the feasibility and reliability of such a "verified" space.

Baron points out that although social networking and interactive sites like Facebook bring back the discourse aspect of communication/rhetoric present in face-to-face and oral communication, there is no ability to ascertain whether or not anyone is actually who they say they are or are presenting true facts. The Internet acts as a facilitator of discourse, but the inability to really engage and challenge the author remains because the author is still this ambiguous/anonymous thing pushing information or the idea of themself. On page 185 of A Better Pencil Baron talks about Facebook and the profile pages of people such as Joseph Stalin, Abbie Hoffman, and George W. Bush that have an air of reality thanks to Facebook's "claim that people on Facebook are who they say they are and behave the way they do in the real world'"(185). Due to inaccurate information associated with the profile, the impossibility of that person creating a profile, or some other reason, these profiles, which are theoretically factual, are clearly not factual or true. If written communication through the Internet and Facebook in particular can't filter out obvious fiction, which is in essence unchallengeable since the author of record doesn't exist/isn't present, what hope is there that substantiative discourse can be restored through this relatively new medium of the Web?

It seems apparent that without stifling controls on freedom, how people are represented, and "tracked" online, it is nearly impossible to use the Web and the internet to restore the same level of veracity that was present in oral cultures and oral "texts." We can get close and achieve a variation of that level of truthfulness, but it requires that we all buy in to the understanding that any discourse we have with the author is merely a version of or an idea of "the author" and the author is available to us, but conceptually just as removed as they were when print was king.

Evolution of Writing Technology

It is interesting how the ideas of purity and authenticity keep cropping up as technology advances and has an impact on writing or at least the general perception of writing. Starting in the 20th century we see technology in general and specifically related to writing seemed to progress and alter the idea of text at a previously unprecedented rate. Ages passed with writing on stone and clay tablets, which eventually gave way to more portable means to produce text such as parchment, pencil, pen, and ultimately printing press.  In the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century we see the proliferation of a mobile printing press aka the typewriter, which was quickly usurped by the personal computer within a span of 100 years.

We have this small window in relatively recent history in which writing went from a very handicraft/artisanal process (in terms of actually putting text on a medium) to a very utilitarian and more accessible process. At one point writing was handled by the privileged and educated few, but with the mass availability of inexpensive paper, pencils, and pens, people were soon able to create seemingly a seemingly endless amount of work with relative ease and no specialized training (calligraphy, chiseling, etc). Ultimately taking us to where we are today with inconceivable numbers of people able to create and publish their own thoughts and ideas in digital format.

It seems that with the spread of writing (or more importantly content creation), the idea of purity or authenticity has consistently been an issue. As discussed by Ong and now Baron, Plato saw several problematic issues with writing as a standard practice and felt that not only would writing limit our reliance on memory, but also diminish the capacity for critical thought/argument because there is no way to discover the true meaning of any written text in the absence of the author. There may be some validity to Plato’s statement, but writing supplanted oral story telling as the most accepted way to share information. However, this idea of purity did not escape as cultures and societies continued to remediate communication. It seems that there is always this latent criticism that anything new is inherently less pure than the old way. Beyond the example of Plato, in “Thoreau’s Pencil” we see a more modern iteration of this idea in which Thoreau scoffed at the idea of the telegraph because there isn’t as much of a connection with the author of the message. This chapter continues to elaborate on how this idea persisted as the telephone replaced the telegraph, and how new forms of media have started to join these older options.

The older more artistic and labor-intensive forms of writing haven’t gone away, but they do seem to be held in higher esteem or assigned greater worth than “common” methods of writing even if the new and common methods are more efficient or appropriate. However, I’d argue that there’s not much use in worrying about these changes in how we write. I think a more appropriate response is to adopt these new writing technologies, which absorb some of the tedium of writing, and build upon these technologies and knowledge to more clearly focus on the intended message rather than the mechanics of production.