A New World Order (2.8.11)

        This week’s reading concerned not the characteristics of online communities or social networks but instead what results from their seemingly uninhibited growth and widespread use. Both Here Comes Everybody and Design to Thrive, interestingly enough, draw comparisons between today’s technological, online revolution with the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press. This is no coincidence. What both Shirky and Howard pick up on in their respective books are the implications this type of technological advancement has for society. I hate to write “society” – it’s an overused terms that is nebulous to the point of uselessness – but the fact remains that entire societies are shaped by this kind of technology, which affects the social conditions and possibilities of the day. The effects are simply enormous.

        Shirky points out that mass amateurization is one of the more salient and society-changing effects. He explains that mass amateurization must be considered against professionalism which, by definition, includes a specialized minority of individuals. He writes that “a profession becomes, for its members, a way of understanding their world” (58), resulting in not only a specific body of knowledge, but also a biased one. This professional bias shapes in a major way how certain industries, particularly media industries, operate. As a result, the relationship we as everyday consumers have with media is affected. Shirky takes a close (and lengthy, I might add) look at how this is changing with the advent of social networks and online media outlets. He considers, for the most part, journalism. Professionals have held a privileged position in industries like journalism because journalists have, in a sense, been a commodity. To become published by the reigning news media outlets, a journalist must have the right qualifications, follow industry guidelines, understand a specific code of ethics, and produce work that their employers consider quality and valuable. The trend Shirky is tracing in light of social networking (and a slew of other web-based media outlets) is that, while journalists occupy a professional class all their own, the class of “amateur journalists” is growing enormously. The reason for this is simple: you don’t need to go through the “official channels” to publish your work. Now practically anyone with a computer and an internet connection can publish ideas to which, for all intents and purposes, the entire world can have access.

        This is of course not to say that anything posted on the internet will gain a massive audience. In fact, the opposite is true. There is so much media now available, that most of what exists online is only seen by a fraction of internet users. Nonetheless, this has major implications for the traditional flow of information. While material is, in professional settings, filtered and then published, the internet allows people to publish without any interference or oversight. “From now on,” Shirky writes, “news can break into public consciousness without the traditional press weighing in” (64). Wikipedia was a second important example offered in the Shirky’s book. A team of amateurs essentially provides the material required to make Wikipedia happen. It works because the content is understood as a process, not a product. Of course, filtering still happens. Now, it is simply up to the public at large, the prospective audience, to do the filtering. This is true on sites like Flickr.com or allpoetry.com, and especially true on Wikipedia where any and everyone can edit articles. Ultimately, amateurs now have publishing outlets at their disposal, but relatively few receive particularly grand amounts of attention. In other words, material put online receives an audience once the people determine that it deserves an audience.

        Shirky distinguishes this material from professional material – the difference between what you might discover on a blog and what you would read on the New York Time’s website – and specifies the former as user-generated content. However, many people who make use of the publishing capabilities offered by the internet are not looking for the kind of attention or necessarily the audience that traditional media outlets would generate. Wikipedia is proof of that. No money changes hands, and few if any contributors receive enormous amounts of credit for their work. It boils down to the goals and shared interest of the community that makes the site viable. It is important to those users, so it is worth pursuing without the promise of credit or. What is interesting, however, is that much of this material, particularly what is found on social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace, is not intended for wide audiences at all. It is essentially the equivalent of private conversations but “now it’s done in the same medium as professionally produced material” (86). What Shirky is closing in upon is the prevalence of these sites and their growing ubiquity, particularly among young people. Very soon, a generation that will not know what a world without these technological capabilities is like will be running, and most likely adapting, information industries for good. This is the point at which, according to Shirky, the technology becomes not simply ubiquitous but invisible.

        What I find so interesting, and admittedly troubling, about this revolution is the institutional affects it will undoubtedly have. Dr. Howard acknowledges this problem specifically, noting that “technologies may change rapidly, human beings don’t” (207). He also astutely points out that our thinking about technology needs to change. We can’t think technologically; we must think sociologically. (His example concerning Hiltz and Turoff proves that this type of thinking is effective, even in terms of predicting what the future of technology will look like because ultimately what technology does will shape and be shaped by the society into which it is introduced.) What I wonder, even more than what issues online community managers can expect to face as their communities continue to grow and continue to have more influence, is how our thinking about communications is going to change. Or, perhaps more specifically, if we are doing enough now to revolutionize our thinking along with our technology. (I realize that I’m spinning my wheels here, but I’ll land my point momentarily.)

        While I find the versatility of sites like Twitter and the ability of its users to affect real political change astounding (as Dr. Howard recognizes in Design to Thrive), I cannot help but recognize that we lack professional codes for handling this type of communication. I was a camp counselor a few years ago, and one of my campers friended on me Facebook once the summer ended. I now receive updates concerning her life constantly, including a very heated and very public argument between herself and a peer via status updates and comments. Granted, only friends of this girl will see these updates, but what business does a middle school student really have airing her dirty laundry for what I imagine are hundreds of “friends” to see online? Dr. Howard and Clay Shirky are both right to note that widespread publishing capabilities are changing society as we know it. But are we, individually, changing along with it? Are we educating young people, like my former camper, about privacy and about the appropriate ways to deal with anger? Or are we being inundated with ways to very publicly say what we think while still feeling anonymous? This is what concerns me. We publish ideas, even for a few people, on a massive and seemingly faceless online system, but we forget that what is published is often personal and is very much available to any interested audience. I am absolutely not advocating censorship or condescension of young people. I truly believe that increased freedom of expression is a good thing. Still, I cannot help but think that we sometimes use this as an excuse for avoiding some serious self-reflection and even more serious self-editing.