Self Evidence, with a grain of salt
Modern Marketing - Collaborate Marketing Services: Ready for the 5th Estate?
Jonathan Miller, Head of AOL in the US, testifies to the popularity of Citizen’s Media. He says that 60 – 70 per cent of the time people spend on AOL is devoted to ‘audience generated content’.
Technocrati.com tracks more than 4 million blogs and adds 20,000 a day to its register.
As I'm blogging facts & figures quoted from other blogs, about blogging, the question of fact-checking has struck me.
It would be SO easy to go out and find all the Yes-men I want for the ideas that interest me, to not only believe what I want to, but to present it as fact.
There's that game you play in a large group - it's called something like Rumour" or "Gossip" - passing word-of-mouth around a circle in whispers, for the purpose of comparing the initial seed to its last known repeated version.
Doesn't it always get changed?
Didn't all those scribes - some not so literate - all of them hand-copying texts from someone else's hand-written version - on precious materials, not so easy to come by - didn't their process collectively result in divergent texts - and aren't we paying the price in wars and social exclusion, the nasty residue left from flinging the stain of hatred around with more passion than precision?
The big mess of religious disagreement is powerful because the original sources no longer exist, and the evangelists have automatically become the definitive source themselves. And they can't be called up to clarify or confirm anything.
But isn't this discrepancy inherent (imminent?) in the history we proclaim to be the truth?
My Women's Studies History Professor in College, Miranda can't-remember-her-last-name was the first person to introduce me to the concept that History is a set of answers filtered through the Questions asked of it, and so ultimately, the Historian is the author of historical truth more than they may even consciously realize.
So, in order to believe something, we must believe the person telling it. This gives online grassroots publishers considerable bang for their blogs.
But, there is speedy set of checks and balances that comes to play - all the loud-mouth squeaky-wheeled dissenters and critics who will swarm a conversation and if nothing else shine their collective light on it. If there's a rat, and someone smells it, the blogosphere is a lot more likely to cough it up in the light of day and turn it inside out than the Big Brother Media on the other side of the room clinging to the idea of united fronts and a controlled, contracted agenda.
It goes round in circles.
Ultimately, it's up to the individual to invent their own opinion of the Truth and that's the end of the line, even if the conversation goes on to infinity.
You can't believe everything you read. Even the numbers can't be trusted - the Truth determined by a show of hands is as nuanced and shaded at its core as there are different fingerprints stirring it up in the air.
If you think Numbers don't lie, just ask them to raise their hands if they're a liar.
Jonathan Miller, Head of AOL in the US, testifies to the popularity of Citizen’s Media. He says that 60 – 70 per cent of the time people spend on AOL is devoted to ‘audience generated content’.
Technocrati.com tracks more than 4 million blogs and adds 20,000 a day to its register.
As I'm blogging facts & figures quoted from other blogs, about blogging, the question of fact-checking has struck me.
It would be SO easy to go out and find all the Yes-men I want for the ideas that interest me, to not only believe what I want to, but to present it as fact.
There's that game you play in a large group - it's called something like Rumour" or "Gossip" - passing word-of-mouth around a circle in whispers, for the purpose of comparing the initial seed to its last known repeated version.
Doesn't it always get changed?
Didn't all those scribes - some not so literate - all of them hand-copying texts from someone else's hand-written version - on precious materials, not so easy to come by - didn't their process collectively result in divergent texts - and aren't we paying the price in wars and social exclusion, the nasty residue left from flinging the stain of hatred around with more passion than precision?
The big mess of religious disagreement is powerful because the original sources no longer exist, and the evangelists have automatically become the definitive source themselves. And they can't be called up to clarify or confirm anything.
But isn't this discrepancy inherent (imminent?) in the history we proclaim to be the truth?
My Women's Studies History Professor in College, Miranda can't-remember-her-last-name was the first person to introduce me to the concept that History is a set of answers filtered through the Questions asked of it, and so ultimately, the Historian is the author of historical truth more than they may even consciously realize.
So, in order to believe something, we must believe the person telling it. This gives online grassroots publishers considerable bang for their blogs.
But, there is speedy set of checks and balances that comes to play - all the loud-mouth squeaky-wheeled dissenters and critics who will swarm a conversation and if nothing else shine their collective light on it. If there's a rat, and someone smells it, the blogosphere is a lot more likely to cough it up in the light of day and turn it inside out than the Big Brother Media on the other side of the room clinging to the idea of united fronts and a controlled, contracted agenda.
It goes round in circles.
Ultimately, it's up to the individual to invent their own opinion of the Truth and that's the end of the line, even if the conversation goes on to infinity.
You can't believe everything you read. Even the numbers can't be trusted - the Truth determined by a show of hands is as nuanced and shaded at its core as there are different fingerprints stirring it up in the air.
If you think Numbers don't lie, just ask them to raise their hands if they're a liar.
posted by Slade at 2:33 PM
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