The director of another college communications department in the office where I work came to my office on Tuesday looking puzzled. He was carrying an older issue of the student newspaper I advise. As I often see people carrying that newspaper and looking puzzled, I wasn't alarmed.
"So," he said, "Did you read this?"
I draw in a deep breath to start my well-rehearsed spiel about how I do not read the paper before it is printed because that isn't ethical and ... I realize he's pointing to a word in a letter to the editor. And that word is "Wikipedia." In the letter, a student is pointing out an error in a previous student newspaper article. The letter-writer suggests that the newspaper editors should have looked at Wikipedia.
"Do you think they get the irony here?" he asked me.
"No. I don't," I said, sighing.
He looked at me puzzled.
"People don't know what they don't care to know. And obviously, people don't care to know that Wikipedia isn't exactly 100% credible."
He mumbles something about teenagers, and I shot him a look. "No, no, adults too."
He rolls his eyes, obviously remembering adults, seemingly informationally-savvy adults that are also swindled by Wikipedia.
I pull Andrew Keen's book from my bag and hold it out to him. In what felt like a spiritual moment in the religion of information, he took it.
"He understands," I said.
My visitor returned yesterday, singing Keen's praises. I said hold on, look at this. I showed him where yesterday, BoingBoing.com called Keen a "professional troll and spokesdouche for internet-fearing reactionaries."
We discussed, and realized that yeah, of course BoingBoing is going to react that way, because BoingBoing's whole position is Internet=everything great about culture. It's almost as if your position defines your opinions on everything. I'm a journalist, a dyed-in-the-wool pen-and-paper journalist, so of course I think the Internet is a bit overrated. But I'm charged with churning out the next generation of journalists because I'm a newspaper adviser (and now also an English professor), so doesn't that position demand I be a steward of technology, no matter how useless it might be?
Bottom line: it's bells-and-whistles vs. meat-and-potatoes. Until they can figure out how to fill those Internet bells with meat, I'm not buying.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Monday, August 6, 2007
the unpopular opinion (paper) DRAFT
This is a rough draft of a position-type editorial article for people who do my job: college media advisers. My goal was to argue the unpopular side of a popular argument, that college media needs to produce many different types of media in their newsgathering and presentation functions (i.e. web video, audio and story packages) for every story. Please note that not only is this a draft (my opinions and support statements aren't 100% fleshed out), this is not an attack on any of the people mentioned, but a discussion of their ideas and my ideas.
Bryan Murley is a man on a mission. Since a last-minute session at the fall college media conference in 2005, Murley has been the go-to guy for all things new media. His blog, Innovation in College Media, has become required reading for college media advisers everywhere and his analysis of emerging trends in new media convergence in college news operations are spot on. Just yesterday he reminded us we need to have some sort of video plan for our reporters and photojournalists right now. Anybody can see that much of consumer newsgathering is done on the web nowadays, or at least, not in the ink-and-paper newspaper format, but does that necessarily mean college newspapers need to become multiplatform multimedia news delivery systems overnight? Or at all?
Labeled as anti-technology in 2007 is definitely an unpopular place to be. Nobody knows this better than Andrew Keen. His book “The Cult of the Amateur” has put him on the hit list of every pro-Web blogger and commentator on the Web, but his opinions and ideas are at least giving people something to think about as they forage ahead into new media territory. Keen’s theory is simple: more voices does not necessarily equal quality information. He frequently compares the “chatter” on the Internet to T.H. Huxley’s “infinite monkey theorem,” where infinite monkeys have infinite typewriters and one eventually creates a masterpiece. In the pre-Internet age (T.H. Huxley died in 1895), the concept of infinite monkeys on typewriters seemed like a mathematical joke, but now, with the Internet, it seems more like a sad metaphor. Keen says this joke has become a reality. We are the monkeys, chattering away on our typewriters, but none of us are creating a masterpiece yet. It should be noted here that T.H.’s grandson, Aldous Huxley, wrote the dystopian future in the novel Brave New World in 1932.
Keen’s argument goes on for more than 200 pages, showing us the crimes committed by Web 2.0 against talent, authorship, intellectual property laws, musicianship, advertising revenue and journalists. Journalists, traditionally educated craftsmen, are being muscled out because … well, because of a lot of things. They’re fond of blaming the Internet. Craigslist and Yahoo are stealing their ad revenue, which pays their salaries. Wikipedia and celebrity gossip sites are stealing their readers. Google News is taking their content. The Economist says that over the next few decades, half of the newspapers will go under. Keen bundles this idea by attacking the most famous newspaper in the United States: The New York Times. According to Michael Wolff, a journalist, for the Times to generate its print revenue, they’d either have to reach 400-500 million online readers or compromise their editorial content to please potential advertisers. Granted, this is The New York Times, not your average university weekly tabloid. But not even the Times would able to seamlessly abandon it’s paper pages for web pages “At best,” Wolff says,” it might become a specialized Internet player … a low-end, high-volume information producer.” What does that sound like? Oh yeah, Wikipedia.
Even the most thorough and cutting-edge Webophiles will confess to having their doubts about Wikipedia. If you’re looking for the infinite monkey theorem at work, this is where to find it. It’s flaw, however, isn’t that it can be edited by anyone from Harvard professors to Harvard janitors, but that it doesn’t take any particular talent to contribute. Journalists are celebrated for their storytelling ability and creativity. How you tell a story is your selling point. That you can tell it better than anybody else is your ticket to a journalism job. Wikipedia fails here because it doesn’t really tell stories, and those it does tell, like Wikipedia entries on news and current events, are dull, bland, play-by-play lists devoid of any sort of analysis or insight. Why? Because analysis and insight aren’t appropriate for the encyclopedia medium. There’s an old saying in radio, from back when most news couldn’t be reported live on the radio, that they can just wait a day and make it analysis. Are we sacrificing the analysis to get things earlier? Is that worth it? Is this happening in college media? Is that worth it?
Lots of people think so. Journalism professors and college media advisers alike seem to agree that loading their students with as many different skills possible will make them more viable in the shrinking journalism job market. Ryan Sholin, a new media blogger and graduate student at San Jose State University says it’s clear, “J-schools can either play a critical role in training the next generation of journalists, or they can fade into irrelevancy.” That’s a steep order. He also says “Reporters need to do more than write. The new world calls for a new skill set, and you and Mr. Notebook need to make some new friends, like Mr. Microphone and Mr. Point & Shoot.” Steeper still. Think of your average journalism-school freshman. Jenny Freshman wrote a few articles for her high school paper and wants to be a journalism student to refine her writing skills. Too bad. Jenny has to be a radio producer, photographer, videographer, anchor, editor, web designer and maybe do some writing in between. The jack-of-all-trades journalist model might be appropriate for a senior student looking at job options, but for the freshman, or the first-time contributor to a college student newspaper, it isn’t a realistic starting place.
The flip-side negative of being a jack-of-all-trades, like some believe all journalists (or at least journalists that will keep their jobs in the next ten years) should become, is that it’s hard to focus and refine a skill when you’re always trying to add more. Plus, it’s hard to develop new skills without strong foundation skills. Let’s go back to Jenny Freshman, who’s trying to write her first lead. In a supportive learning environment, she should get ample time to craft a strong print lead, through thorough trial-and-error. Once she gets that skill, it’s a lot easier to then teach her to modify that lead for radio or television or the web. It’s harder to try to teach leads across platforms because you have no foundation skill (like writing a print lead) to build from. Just like this lead example, in early reporting classes, students should be learning how to tell stories the easiest way, through writing, just like they’ve been writing essays and papers throughout their educational careers. By building on those skills, early print reporting classes can help transition students into journalistic writing. Once they get a solid foundation in journalistic storytelling, they can easily translate those skills into different media. Another drawback of this jack-of-all-trades model is the lack of specialization. There’s no reward for being exceptionally good at any journalistic skill if everyone is expected to be competent in many areas. For example, when I was in journalism school, I was a good reporter, but only a mediocre copy editor. Luckily, I knew people that were and we could help each other. There is something to be said for specialization and roles in team projects. If you worked at a newspaper, the same staff member wouldn’t be taking the photos, writing the stories, designing the paper, cleaning the office and selling the ads. It makes more sense for the best photographer to take the photos, the best designer to layout the pages and the best salespeople to sell the ads. Plus, it gives people, especially students, a sense of identity to figure out what area they’re best at and what area they want to pursue. This way they can focus their energy and really excel in that area, instead of being too busy trying to be competent in everything.
As educators, we also must be mindful of what the students want out of the experience. This is different at every college. A journalism-school student at a large public school with an established daily college paper may need, or want, skills that a student editor at a weekly tabloid at a fine arts college may not. Likewise, students at that large university may expect different things from their college newspaper than students at the small art college. Advisers are always preaching audience appropriateness, and it should extend even to this area. If your student body wants in-depth, multimedia coverage of campus events, give it to them. But if your students aren’t interested, and would just like a newspaper to read while they’re waiting for class to start, you shouldn’t do unnecessary work that won’t be appreciated. Additionally, this work could detract effort from your existing product, and further harm your relationship to your readers. The readers come first, and in college student media, it’s easier to find out what they want. As advisers and educators, though, we must also uphold certain standards of quality. If students aren’t building their foundational skills as writers and reporters, we must be the ones to help them focus. Like Keen says, having more monkeys at more typewriters (and in this case, additional monkeys with typewriters, cameras, videocameras, audio recorders and web design software) doesn’t necessarily mean quality work will come out of it. Quality is the top priority here, and producing quality work should be every student media organization’s goal.
Even if you don’t agree with everything Keen has to say, hopefully you can agree with this. Keen says, early on, “Talent, as ever is a limited resource, the needle in today’s digital haystack.” Is our obligation as college media advisers to make those needles, or the haystack of mediocrity? Is our obligation to make signal or noise? Is our profession going to literally be in the hands of the typewriting monkeys? We have the power to stop this from happening. We have the power to train the new generation to be needles instead of hay, and, more importantly, to know the difference.
Bryan Murley is a man on a mission. Since a last-minute session at the fall college media conference in 2005, Murley has been the go-to guy for all things new media. His blog, Innovation in College Media, has become required reading for college media advisers everywhere and his analysis of emerging trends in new media convergence in college news operations are spot on. Just yesterday he reminded us we need to have some sort of video plan for our reporters and photojournalists right now. Anybody can see that much of consumer newsgathering is done on the web nowadays, or at least, not in the ink-and-paper newspaper format, but does that necessarily mean college newspapers need to become multiplatform multimedia news delivery systems overnight? Or at all?
Labeled as anti-technology in 2007 is definitely an unpopular place to be. Nobody knows this better than Andrew Keen. His book “The Cult of the Amateur” has put him on the hit list of every pro-Web blogger and commentator on the Web, but his opinions and ideas are at least giving people something to think about as they forage ahead into new media territory. Keen’s theory is simple: more voices does not necessarily equal quality information. He frequently compares the “chatter” on the Internet to T.H. Huxley’s “infinite monkey theorem,” where infinite monkeys have infinite typewriters and one eventually creates a masterpiece. In the pre-Internet age (T.H. Huxley died in 1895), the concept of infinite monkeys on typewriters seemed like a mathematical joke, but now, with the Internet, it seems more like a sad metaphor. Keen says this joke has become a reality. We are the monkeys, chattering away on our typewriters, but none of us are creating a masterpiece yet. It should be noted here that T.H.’s grandson, Aldous Huxley, wrote the dystopian future in the novel Brave New World in 1932.
Keen’s argument goes on for more than 200 pages, showing us the crimes committed by Web 2.0 against talent, authorship, intellectual property laws, musicianship, advertising revenue and journalists. Journalists, traditionally educated craftsmen, are being muscled out because … well, because of a lot of things. They’re fond of blaming the Internet. Craigslist and Yahoo are stealing their ad revenue, which pays their salaries. Wikipedia and celebrity gossip sites are stealing their readers. Google News is taking their content. The Economist says that over the next few decades, half of the newspapers will go under. Keen bundles this idea by attacking the most famous newspaper in the United States: The New York Times. According to Michael Wolff, a journalist, for the Times to generate its print revenue, they’d either have to reach 400-500 million online readers or compromise their editorial content to please potential advertisers. Granted, this is The New York Times, not your average university weekly tabloid. But not even the Times would able to seamlessly abandon it’s paper pages for web pages “At best,” Wolff says,” it might become a specialized Internet player … a low-end, high-volume information producer.” What does that sound like? Oh yeah, Wikipedia.
Even the most thorough and cutting-edge Webophiles will confess to having their doubts about Wikipedia. If you’re looking for the infinite monkey theorem at work, this is where to find it. It’s flaw, however, isn’t that it can be edited by anyone from Harvard professors to Harvard janitors, but that it doesn’t take any particular talent to contribute. Journalists are celebrated for their storytelling ability and creativity. How you tell a story is your selling point. That you can tell it better than anybody else is your ticket to a journalism job. Wikipedia fails here because it doesn’t really tell stories, and those it does tell, like Wikipedia entries on news and current events, are dull, bland, play-by-play lists devoid of any sort of analysis or insight. Why? Because analysis and insight aren’t appropriate for the encyclopedia medium. There’s an old saying in radio, from back when most news couldn’t be reported live on the radio, that they can just wait a day and make it analysis. Are we sacrificing the analysis to get things earlier? Is that worth it? Is this happening in college media? Is that worth it?
Lots of people think so. Journalism professors and college media advisers alike seem to agree that loading their students with as many different skills possible will make them more viable in the shrinking journalism job market. Ryan Sholin, a new media blogger and graduate student at San Jose State University says it’s clear, “J-schools can either play a critical role in training the next generation of journalists, or they can fade into irrelevancy.” That’s a steep order. He also says “Reporters need to do more than write. The new world calls for a new skill set, and you and Mr. Notebook need to make some new friends, like Mr. Microphone and Mr. Point & Shoot.” Steeper still. Think of your average journalism-school freshman. Jenny Freshman wrote a few articles for her high school paper and wants to be a journalism student to refine her writing skills. Too bad. Jenny has to be a radio producer, photographer, videographer, anchor, editor, web designer and maybe do some writing in between. The jack-of-all-trades journalist model might be appropriate for a senior student looking at job options, but for the freshman, or the first-time contributor to a college student newspaper, it isn’t a realistic starting place.
The flip-side negative of being a jack-of-all-trades, like some believe all journalists (or at least journalists that will keep their jobs in the next ten years) should become, is that it’s hard to focus and refine a skill when you’re always trying to add more. Plus, it’s hard to develop new skills without strong foundation skills. Let’s go back to Jenny Freshman, who’s trying to write her first lead. In a supportive learning environment, she should get ample time to craft a strong print lead, through thorough trial-and-error. Once she gets that skill, it’s a lot easier to then teach her to modify that lead for radio or television or the web. It’s harder to try to teach leads across platforms because you have no foundation skill (like writing a print lead) to build from. Just like this lead example, in early reporting classes, students should be learning how to tell stories the easiest way, through writing, just like they’ve been writing essays and papers throughout their educational careers. By building on those skills, early print reporting classes can help transition students into journalistic writing. Once they get a solid foundation in journalistic storytelling, they can easily translate those skills into different media. Another drawback of this jack-of-all-trades model is the lack of specialization. There’s no reward for being exceptionally good at any journalistic skill if everyone is expected to be competent in many areas. For example, when I was in journalism school, I was a good reporter, but only a mediocre copy editor. Luckily, I knew people that were and we could help each other. There is something to be said for specialization and roles in team projects. If you worked at a newspaper, the same staff member wouldn’t be taking the photos, writing the stories, designing the paper, cleaning the office and selling the ads. It makes more sense for the best photographer to take the photos, the best designer to layout the pages and the best salespeople to sell the ads. Plus, it gives people, especially students, a sense of identity to figure out what area they’re best at and what area they want to pursue. This way they can focus their energy and really excel in that area, instead of being too busy trying to be competent in everything.
As educators, we also must be mindful of what the students want out of the experience. This is different at every college. A journalism-school student at a large public school with an established daily college paper may need, or want, skills that a student editor at a weekly tabloid at a fine arts college may not. Likewise, students at that large university may expect different things from their college newspaper than students at the small art college. Advisers are always preaching audience appropriateness, and it should extend even to this area. If your student body wants in-depth, multimedia coverage of campus events, give it to them. But if your students aren’t interested, and would just like a newspaper to read while they’re waiting for class to start, you shouldn’t do unnecessary work that won’t be appreciated. Additionally, this work could detract effort from your existing product, and further harm your relationship to your readers. The readers come first, and in college student media, it’s easier to find out what they want. As advisers and educators, though, we must also uphold certain standards of quality. If students aren’t building their foundational skills as writers and reporters, we must be the ones to help them focus. Like Keen says, having more monkeys at more typewriters (and in this case, additional monkeys with typewriters, cameras, videocameras, audio recorders and web design software) doesn’t necessarily mean quality work will come out of it. Quality is the top priority here, and producing quality work should be every student media organization’s goal.
Even if you don’t agree with everything Keen has to say, hopefully you can agree with this. Keen says, early on, “Talent, as ever is a limited resource, the needle in today’s digital haystack.” Is our obligation as college media advisers to make those needles, or the haystack of mediocrity? Is our obligation to make signal or noise? Is our profession going to literally be in the hands of the typewriting monkeys? We have the power to stop this from happening. We have the power to train the new generation to be needles instead of hay, and, more importantly, to know the difference.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
internet personality
Today, while I was on Facebook, I came across an interesting application. Recently, Facebook has added tons of applications; things you can add to your Facebook profile. I added an application called "Scrabulous," which lets me play Scrabble through Facebook with my other friends on Facebook, and an application called "Personal DNA." Basically, the Personal DNA application is a personality test. It's a well-designed (i.e. pretty), interactive test that lets you rank personal preferences and then it gives you an outcome. The scary thing is that it's dead accurate.
My results are here:
If you click on to read them, it basically says I'm exactly like myself. It says I'm self-reliant, generous, practical and hard-working. What I'm wondering though, is did I know this before the Internet told me?
In high school career ed class, we took the Myers-Briggs type indicator. I was an INTJ. This was in 1998. I re-took it today, on the Internet, and I'm still an INTJ. I feel like this is pretty accurate as well. To further test the accuracy, I had a friend take it. I've known this person for about seven years, and he's never taken a test like this. He's also an INTJ, and that's pretty accurate as well. It's strange, though, because I recognize these traits in him and in myself, but I didn't really ever think of us as similar. I probably could have come to this conclusion without the Internet as well.
So, I did all this, and realized that it's just another way, like Facebook, or MySpace to read and write and talk about myself. Now I feel like I was swindled by the Internet. It tricks me into thinking I'm special and interesting, when really, I'm just another person taking an online personality test. While this isn't exactly Web 2.0, it's sort of a stepping stone between Web and Web 2.0. It's less committal than MySpace or Facebook, because you aren't forced to share your results, but it still engages you in a kind of self-focus that many Web 2.0 things focus on.
My results are here:
If you click on to read them, it basically says I'm exactly like myself. It says I'm self-reliant, generous, practical and hard-working. What I'm wondering though, is did I know this before the Internet told me?
In high school career ed class, we took the Myers-Briggs type indicator. I was an INTJ. This was in 1998. I re-took it today, on the Internet, and I'm still an INTJ. I feel like this is pretty accurate as well. To further test the accuracy, I had a friend take it. I've known this person for about seven years, and he's never taken a test like this. He's also an INTJ, and that's pretty accurate as well. It's strange, though, because I recognize these traits in him and in myself, but I didn't really ever think of us as similar. I probably could have come to this conclusion without the Internet as well.
So, I did all this, and realized that it's just another way, like Facebook, or MySpace to read and write and talk about myself. Now I feel like I was swindled by the Internet. It tricks me into thinking I'm special and interesting, when really, I'm just another person taking an online personality test. While this isn't exactly Web 2.0, it's sort of a stepping stone between Web and Web 2.0. It's less committal than MySpace or Facebook, because you aren't forced to share your results, but it still engages you in a kind of self-focus that many Web 2.0 things focus on.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Keen and The Liquid Library
I think one of the reasons I’m having a hard time dissecting this Keen book is the sheer amount of information crammed into it. For example, I just read a short section (not even a chapter, like a sub-chapter) called “The Liquid Library” that was about four pages, but it gave me so much to think about and discuss.
The section is about Kevin Kelly, who Keen calls a “Silicon Valley utopian.” “Kelley wants to kill off the book entirely,” Keen writes. “As well as the intellectual property rights of writers and publishers.”
Doesn’t that sound like Keen is being a little harsh? Well, it’s pretty true. In a 2006 New York Times Magazine article, Kelly basically said he wants all of literature to be on the web and “cross-linked, clustered, cited, extracted, indexed, analyzed, annotated, remixed, reassembled, and woven deeper into the culture than ever before.” Wow. To Kelly, it means “a web of names and a community of ideas.” To Keen, it means “the death of culture.”
Both of these arguments are hard to swallow whole because both of these guys are playing in the extremes. I think that’s where all of these arguments for and against Web 2.0 break down. When you say something as incendiary as “no more intellectual property rights,” it’s easy to attract a deluge of naysayers, and it’s equally true if you say something as incendiary as “Web 2.0 will kill culture.” Haven’t these people ever heard of balance?
I’m guessing this is where so much of the criticism and anti-Keen backlash is coming from. He’s one of those all-or-nothing kind of guys. He’s throwing out the baby with the bathwater, along with the bathtub and maybe even the whole bathroom. And even if Keen is wrong, or a blustering Goliath, he’s successfully stirring up debate and thought on what will be the long-term effects of the shift from regular old Internet to Web 2.0. That can’t be discounted.
I can’t wait to read who he attacks next.
The section is about Kevin Kelly, who Keen calls a “Silicon Valley utopian.” “Kelley wants to kill off the book entirely,” Keen writes. “As well as the intellectual property rights of writers and publishers.”
Doesn’t that sound like Keen is being a little harsh? Well, it’s pretty true. In a 2006 New York Times Magazine article, Kelly basically said he wants all of literature to be on the web and “cross-linked, clustered, cited, extracted, indexed, analyzed, annotated, remixed, reassembled, and woven deeper into the culture than ever before.” Wow. To Kelly, it means “a web of names and a community of ideas.” To Keen, it means “the death of culture.”
Both of these arguments are hard to swallow whole because both of these guys are playing in the extremes. I think that’s where all of these arguments for and against Web 2.0 break down. When you say something as incendiary as “no more intellectual property rights,” it’s easy to attract a deluge of naysayers, and it’s equally true if you say something as incendiary as “Web 2.0 will kill culture.” Haven’t these people ever heard of balance?
I’m guessing this is where so much of the criticism and anti-Keen backlash is coming from. He’s one of those all-or-nothing kind of guys. He’s throwing out the baby with the bathwater, along with the bathtub and maybe even the whole bathroom. And even if Keen is wrong, or a blustering Goliath, he’s successfully stirring up debate and thought on what will be the long-term effects of the shift from regular old Internet to Web 2.0. That can’t be discounted.
I can’t wait to read who he attacks next.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Wikipedia + Jessica = love/hate
In Andrew Keen’s book (which I am still reading, not because I’m a slow reader, but because I’m trying to enjoy it), he talks a lot about Wikipedia. And why shouldn’t he? Everybody else is. I got an email from my eLearning professor about not using Wikipedia as a source, in her class or anyone else’s. Stephen Colbert is making up fake words about Wikipedia. Even old media are talking, like a 2006 New Yorker article. It’s almost impossible not to have an opinion of Wikipedia, no matter if you’ve never even used the Internet.
Last summer, at our family beach house, my grandmother (who has barely used a computer, let alone the Internet) wanted some information. My cousin, a web-savvy teenage boy, printed her a Wikipedia page.
“So it’s like an encyclopedia on the Internet,” she said.
He should have just nodded.
“It’s open source, anybody can edit it,” he said.
“So it’s fake?”
I tried to help.
“It’s democratized.”
I did not help. This was the beginning of my Wikipedia opinion, and at this point I was skeptical.
The arguing point here is reliability. This really is the thousand monkeys sitting at a thousand computers producing something that, while it may not be brilliant, is popular. According to Wikipedia’s Wikipedia page, the site receives between 10,000 and 30,000 page requests per second. Another Wikipedia page, titled “Reliability of Wikipedia” details tests done by third parties to assess the accuracy of Wikipedia. Newspapers and magazines have done numerous studies and assessments with various people to see really how reliable it is. Most of these tests found that it was reliable, however, it still doesn’t have much of an authority. Authority is connected to reliability, but isn’t the same. Jessica Clary saying that Wikipedia is possibly unreliable is one thing, but The New York Times saying the same thing is more significant, because The New York Times has more authority. It’s older. It’s bigger. It’s written and published more.
Then I read a lot of Wikipedia, and I started to like it. It was good for general information, and answering those tip-of-your-tongue questions. What was that TV show where Alan Ruck was a TV writer? Oh yeah, “Going Places.” What show was on before it? “Perfect Strangers.” When was it on? 9:30 p.m. on Friday night on ABC. This is information you couldn’t find in Encyclopedia Britannica.
But then I started using Wikipedia for other things. I wanted to write an essay about Cotard’s syndrome, and in class I was complaining that the Wikipedia page was lacking. I realized it wasn’t Wikipedia’s fault, but mine. I did a search of Google Scholar (Google’s search engine for scholarly papers and journal articles) and found plenty of information. This is the type of thing Wikipedia isn’t good for.
I agree with my eLearning professor that Wikipeda should not be used as source material in academic work, not because of its peer-editing system, but because it’s too generalized, just like any encyclopedia. It’s good for background information or pop-culture trivia, but not for real research. This brought me into my phase of loving Wikipedia. Because I knew what it was good for, I used it constantly to solve the pop-culture questions I got in my head. What’s that song in the new Jetta commercial? Oh it’s the Silversun Pickups song “Kissing Families.” Where are the Silversun Pickups from? Silver Lake in Los Angeles. What other bands are from there? Rilo Kiley and Elliott Smith. Who’s that guy in Rilo Kiley that was a child actor? Blake Sennett. Wikipedia reading flows like a choose-your-own-adventure book. This was the height of my love affair. Then things started to go downhill.
The New Yorker’s article on Wikipedia was published July 31, 2006 and featured a prominent Wikipedia user known as Essjay. The New Yorker article said that Essjay has a Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law had contributed to sixteen thousand entries. Essjay served terms as chair of the Wikipedia mediation committee and edits articles patiently for errors and obscenities. This Essjay person sounds like your model Wikipedia contributor. Well, good for him, because he’s fake. Essjay is a persona developed by a 24-year-old named Ryan Jordan. In March 2007, Essjay’s persona was revealed, and Essjay retired from the site. Keen devotes two pages in his book to Essjay. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder, is okay with it. He told The New Yorker that he regards the Essjay name as “a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.”
So where does that fall? In the realm of reliability, sure, Ryan Jordan’s contributions to Wikipedia were factually accurate. But what kind of authority do they have? Not much. Essjay’s degrees are made up, and have no basis, so they don’t have much authority.
The scary thing here is that we may be entering a period of time where informational authority doesn’t matter. This would be the real heartbreaker. If informational authority means nothing, then why am I working for my MFA degree? Why are people working for any sort of advanced degree? If Dr. Harvard Professor and Ryan from Kentucky are considered equally knowledgeable, what’s the point? And if that dividion is erased in fields of research and writing and journalism, what’s next? Will the guy operating on me be a real MD, or just some guy that knows a lot about surgery? Yes, it’s an extreme example, but think about it. What's information worth if authority is passé?
Last summer, at our family beach house, my grandmother (who has barely used a computer, let alone the Internet) wanted some information. My cousin, a web-savvy teenage boy, printed her a Wikipedia page.
“So it’s like an encyclopedia on the Internet,” she said.
He should have just nodded.
“It’s open source, anybody can edit it,” he said.
“So it’s fake?”
I tried to help.
“It’s democratized.”
I did not help. This was the beginning of my Wikipedia opinion, and at this point I was skeptical.
The arguing point here is reliability. This really is the thousand monkeys sitting at a thousand computers producing something that, while it may not be brilliant, is popular. According to Wikipedia’s Wikipedia page, the site receives between 10,000 and 30,000 page requests per second. Another Wikipedia page, titled “Reliability of Wikipedia” details tests done by third parties to assess the accuracy of Wikipedia. Newspapers and magazines have done numerous studies and assessments with various people to see really how reliable it is. Most of these tests found that it was reliable, however, it still doesn’t have much of an authority. Authority is connected to reliability, but isn’t the same. Jessica Clary saying that Wikipedia is possibly unreliable is one thing, but The New York Times saying the same thing is more significant, because The New York Times has more authority. It’s older. It’s bigger. It’s written and published more.
Then I read a lot of Wikipedia, and I started to like it. It was good for general information, and answering those tip-of-your-tongue questions. What was that TV show where Alan Ruck was a TV writer? Oh yeah, “Going Places.” What show was on before it? “Perfect Strangers.” When was it on? 9:30 p.m. on Friday night on ABC. This is information you couldn’t find in Encyclopedia Britannica.
But then I started using Wikipedia for other things. I wanted to write an essay about Cotard’s syndrome, and in class I was complaining that the Wikipedia page was lacking. I realized it wasn’t Wikipedia’s fault, but mine. I did a search of Google Scholar (Google’s search engine for scholarly papers and journal articles) and found plenty of information. This is the type of thing Wikipedia isn’t good for.
I agree with my eLearning professor that Wikipeda should not be used as source material in academic work, not because of its peer-editing system, but because it’s too generalized, just like any encyclopedia. It’s good for background information or pop-culture trivia, but not for real research. This brought me into my phase of loving Wikipedia. Because I knew what it was good for, I used it constantly to solve the pop-culture questions I got in my head. What’s that song in the new Jetta commercial? Oh it’s the Silversun Pickups song “Kissing Families.” Where are the Silversun Pickups from? Silver Lake in Los Angeles. What other bands are from there? Rilo Kiley and Elliott Smith. Who’s that guy in Rilo Kiley that was a child actor? Blake Sennett. Wikipedia reading flows like a choose-your-own-adventure book. This was the height of my love affair. Then things started to go downhill.
The New Yorker’s article on Wikipedia was published July 31, 2006 and featured a prominent Wikipedia user known as Essjay. The New Yorker article said that Essjay has a Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law had contributed to sixteen thousand entries. Essjay served terms as chair of the Wikipedia mediation committee and edits articles patiently for errors and obscenities. This Essjay person sounds like your model Wikipedia contributor. Well, good for him, because he’s fake. Essjay is a persona developed by a 24-year-old named Ryan Jordan. In March 2007, Essjay’s persona was revealed, and Essjay retired from the site. Keen devotes two pages in his book to Essjay. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder, is okay with it. He told The New Yorker that he regards the Essjay name as “a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.”
So where does that fall? In the realm of reliability, sure, Ryan Jordan’s contributions to Wikipedia were factually accurate. But what kind of authority do they have? Not much. Essjay’s degrees are made up, and have no basis, so they don’t have much authority.
The scary thing here is that we may be entering a period of time where informational authority doesn’t matter. This would be the real heartbreaker. If informational authority means nothing, then why am I working for my MFA degree? Why are people working for any sort of advanced degree? If Dr. Harvard Professor and Ryan from Kentucky are considered equally knowledgeable, what’s the point? And if that dividion is erased in fields of research and writing and journalism, what’s next? Will the guy operating on me be a real MD, or just some guy that knows a lot about surgery? Yes, it’s an extreme example, but think about it. What's information worth if authority is passé?
Thursday, July 26, 2007
headlines
A few links of interest that are somewhat related to this course, maybe:
A New York Times story about the Junie B. Jones books is here. Apparently, parents are just now discovering that these childrens' books have creative spelling and grammar, and they think kids shouldn't read that. Guess they shouldn't be reading anything else with incorrect grammar, like run-on sentences (there goes Faulkner) or phonetic spelling (bye bye, Mark Twain).
An interview on MediaBistro with Jesse Thorn is here. The answer to #6 is particularly interesting.
And my favorite entry for today is here. I like it so much I'm going to write a little commentary about it. Ready? Here we go.
In short, I am part of a wack-job demographic. A demographic of people that want flexibility and fun from work. A generation that has to be tutored not to text message senior partners at work to ask if they should wear a bra. Great.
But I don't think I'm one of these people.
Sure, I believe that there are people out there in the 18-24 demographic that are, for lack of a better word, spoiled. This is the generation that first had "helicopter parents." This is the generation that grew up with cell phones and Napster and doesn't believe in intellectual property rights. They call it Gen Y in the article and it makes me want to vomit. When the kid in the article says job interviews are for you to tell your potential boss what your requirements are, it makes me so mad. I'm not like this, and I don't want to be thought of as one of these people because I'm their age.
Not to brag, or whatever, but starting next month, I'll have a full-time job (where, in September, I'll probably work a 60+ hour week and most weekends), a part-time job (teaching at another college), plus two classes and regular freelance writing work, and a thesis to get cracking on. I take work very seriously. I'm on time. I try hard not to spend my workday sending text messages. I leave my iPod at home. I dress like I'm 35. I don't want to work at a place that would allow my coworkers to be what I'd call slackers. Apparently, that means in 15 years, I won't want to work anywhere.
I'm still reading the Keen book. I'm so mad I didn't find it before this class started or reviewing it would have been one of my assignments! Hmm, maybe if I can change my next assignment some, I can work it in. Just reading the first two chapters made me want to quit blogging and using Wikipedia. I've been blogging since 2000. Almost seven years. That's more than 1/3 of my life.
A New York Times story about the Junie B. Jones books is here. Apparently, parents are just now discovering that these childrens' books have creative spelling and grammar, and they think kids shouldn't read that. Guess they shouldn't be reading anything else with incorrect grammar, like run-on sentences (there goes Faulkner) or phonetic spelling (bye bye, Mark Twain).
An interview on MediaBistro with Jesse Thorn is here. The answer to #6 is particularly interesting.
And my favorite entry for today is here. I like it so much I'm going to write a little commentary about it. Ready? Here we go.
In short, I am part of a wack-job demographic. A demographic of people that want flexibility and fun from work. A generation that has to be tutored not to text message senior partners at work to ask if they should wear a bra. Great.
But I don't think I'm one of these people.
Sure, I believe that there are people out there in the 18-24 demographic that are, for lack of a better word, spoiled. This is the generation that first had "helicopter parents." This is the generation that grew up with cell phones and Napster and doesn't believe in intellectual property rights. They call it Gen Y in the article and it makes me want to vomit. When the kid in the article says job interviews are for you to tell your potential boss what your requirements are, it makes me so mad. I'm not like this, and I don't want to be thought of as one of these people because I'm their age.
Not to brag, or whatever, but starting next month, I'll have a full-time job (where, in September, I'll probably work a 60+ hour week and most weekends), a part-time job (teaching at another college), plus two classes and regular freelance writing work, and a thesis to get cracking on. I take work very seriously. I'm on time. I try hard not to spend my workday sending text messages. I leave my iPod at home. I dress like I'm 35. I don't want to work at a place that would allow my coworkers to be what I'd call slackers. Apparently, that means in 15 years, I won't want to work anywhere.
I'm still reading the Keen book. I'm so mad I didn't find it before this class started or reviewing it would have been one of my assignments! Hmm, maybe if I can change my next assignment some, I can work it in. Just reading the first two chapters made me want to quit blogging and using Wikipedia. I've been blogging since 2000. Almost seven years. That's more than 1/3 of my life.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
cult of the amateur, part one
My library hold was taking way too long, so I went to Barnes and Noble and bought Andrew Keen's book, and something telling happened while I was in the store.
At first, I couldn't find it. I scoured the "cultural studies" section (which was mislabeled, and what was labeled as "cultural studies" was actually authors A-G in "African-American studies"). I scoured the "current affairs" shelves and the "new nonfiction" area. Nope.
I go get in line at the information kiosk. The guy in front of me, a 14-15-year-old kid with his mom, was ordering Uncanny X-Men books. Does he not know you can order anything you want from the Internet? And they bring it to your house? And usually it's cheaper? Guess not. Maybe the information age hasn't quite reached everyone yet. I wonder if that kid has a MySpace page.
The guy helping him is probably my age, and at oldest he's maybe 27. He finishes with the other guy and motions me up to the counter. I'm hoarse from this cold/sinus infection I've had for 10 days so I have to lean in to be heard. "I'm looking for a book by Andrew Keen, K-E-E-N." "What's it called?" he asks. I tell him. He types it into his book-locater computer.
"Let's go take a look in our Science and Technology section." And there it was, on the bottom shelf, three hardback copies under the "Chemistry for Dummies" selection. He picks up a copy and hands it to me.
"If you read it, come back and let me know what you thought of it. I just wrote a review," he said.
"Oh. I read that this guy was a has-been that's kind of wrong and really full of himself," I said. I mean, I had read that. It's not really what I think, but I wanted to see what kind of reaction I'd get out of this guy.
"Maybe you're not old enough," he says, and purposefully walks away. I hope he meant he thought I was a teenager, and that I was part of the Googlegeneration, with a Wikipedian world view that pays no mind to intellectual property rights or editorial hierarchy. I hope he meant that he thought I was so young I couldn't be helped (I mean, I guess I look younger than I am, and it probably didn't help that I was there in the middle of the day with a cold in jeans and a t-shirt). I hope he didn't mean that I looked stupid.
Anyway, I've read the first chapter and he's already said a lot of things I've said here in this blog, plus some other things. He's mentioned the monkeys with typewriters and the dogs on the Internet. He's talked about Huxley and Big Brother and Facebook and MySpace all in one chapter. I wonder what the rest of the book could be? I mean, it feels like he's already covered all the bases.
I'll keep you posted.
Oh, and while I was typing this, the library called. They have the Keen book for me. Crap.
At first, I couldn't find it. I scoured the "cultural studies" section (which was mislabeled, and what was labeled as "cultural studies" was actually authors A-G in "African-American studies"). I scoured the "current affairs" shelves and the "new nonfiction" area. Nope.
I go get in line at the information kiosk. The guy in front of me, a 14-15-year-old kid with his mom, was ordering Uncanny X-Men books. Does he not know you can order anything you want from the Internet? And they bring it to your house? And usually it's cheaper? Guess not. Maybe the information age hasn't quite reached everyone yet. I wonder if that kid has a MySpace page.
The guy helping him is probably my age, and at oldest he's maybe 27. He finishes with the other guy and motions me up to the counter. I'm hoarse from this cold/sinus infection I've had for 10 days so I have to lean in to be heard. "I'm looking for a book by Andrew Keen, K-E-E-N." "What's it called?" he asks. I tell him. He types it into his book-locater computer.
"Let's go take a look in our Science and Technology section." And there it was, on the bottom shelf, three hardback copies under the "Chemistry for Dummies" selection. He picks up a copy and hands it to me.
"If you read it, come back and let me know what you thought of it. I just wrote a review," he said.
"Oh. I read that this guy was a has-been that's kind of wrong and really full of himself," I said. I mean, I had read that. It's not really what I think, but I wanted to see what kind of reaction I'd get out of this guy.
"Maybe you're not old enough," he says, and purposefully walks away. I hope he meant he thought I was a teenager, and that I was part of the Googlegeneration, with a Wikipedian world view that pays no mind to intellectual property rights or editorial hierarchy. I hope he meant that he thought I was so young I couldn't be helped (I mean, I guess I look younger than I am, and it probably didn't help that I was there in the middle of the day with a cold in jeans and a t-shirt). I hope he didn't mean that I looked stupid.
Anyway, I've read the first chapter and he's already said a lot of things I've said here in this blog, plus some other things. He's mentioned the monkeys with typewriters and the dogs on the Internet. He's talked about Huxley and Big Brother and Facebook and MySpace all in one chapter. I wonder what the rest of the book could be? I mean, it feels like he's already covered all the bases.
I'll keep you posted.
Oh, and while I was typing this, the library called. They have the Keen book for me. Crap.
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