As I quoted Jimmy Carr in class, watching you tube is 'like watching an extended version of You've Been Framed (UK TV show) where you watch all the shit that people send in'. Is this a good thing? Are cultural gatekeepers (online editors) essential to the management of
online content?
Jonathan
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I strongly believe that no one is proficient to do the "job" of gatekeeper.
ReplyDeleteEvery nation and every single person has its own values and ethical principles.
Who is the proper person to say what is good and what is bad. What information is necessary and what is unnecessary? I cannot conceive that some person can do that job.
Every day we receive millions of information. It' s up to us to filter the information we get and to keep what is interesting for us and what is not.
Is the same thing with anonymity, Emily and Andrew had an argument.
Can you tell me which person is capable to write the history in Wikipedia for example?
Who is the proper person to check and approve it?
That is a very fundamental question...
True Georgia, there is a problem of subjectivity involved with cultural gate keeping, what one person likes might be totally different to what someone else likes. Just like in the case of different people reading different information into text.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that we do not question this subjectivity so much with the printed page. Is this because there are limits to the size of volumes or because we ourselves can be more subjective about what we read. However intelligent Google is at deciphering what it is we want to find, it is always up to us to decide what is relevant, true. However when we go to a bookshop, we flip through books and decide what is worth reading, but the difference here is that more than one person (other than the author) has decided that the content is viable for print. This makes the process of searching so much more pleasurable I believe.
Look at the well recognized example of the Harry Potter books. J K Rowling famously had to take her children's novel (or adult for many) to lots of different publishers before it was accepted and published. The value of book publishers is that they, like us, are all different and will have different impressions of what is worth publishing. This means that content has more than one chance to be published and is not restricted to just one persons view. This does ensure however that material that is classed by many as undesirable remains unpublished.
As the saying goes, 'cream rises to the top', meaning that when something is good it will find its proper place. The content's author might have to trail round to lots of different publishers, but in the process it is being trialled (and tested) by an audience – thus making our job as readers much more pleasurable when we know that we do not need to endlessly search through material of varying quality.
The same is true of the web in many cases, because there are some websites that we will frequent more because we value the site's opinion. For example, I visit the Creative Review website because I value what I have read on previous visits. The problem arises most, when we do not know the sites that we are looking for and start the process of searching.
Co-founder of Facebook Chris Hughes outlined this major difference between print and the screen last week on the BBC when he said that the web allowed mass involvement, whereas the printing press was selective. This statement can be seen as being both negative and positive at the same time. The web is great for showcasing new talent, but at the same time is this new talent being recognized through all of the mediocrity? Is there a danger that 'talent' will be undiscovered because so many believe that they have it, causing many stars of tomorrow to be lost?
Jonathan
The Wikipedia question is an interesting one because it relates back to the question of online anonymity. In theory it is easier to define those who are not capable of 'writing history' than those who are. In an interview with Brazillian TV, globo.com, Andrew Keen quotes Jimmy Wales as saying that experienced writers do not have more value than young bloggers. This may be the case when considering comment pages, but I agree with Keen when it comes to pages relating to history where research is valuable. If Wikipedia were not anonymous and contributors could prove their credentials then the quality of the offering would surely improve. However, one of the great values of Wikipedia is the fact that it is so large and wide ranging and if such controls were implemented then the site's value might also be restricted in quantitative terms while every post is verified. Another of the site's merits is that it is often updated so that information is continually renewing itself. If writers were acknowledged then the site would become more bureaucratic and maybe less responsive to changing events. A gatekeeper would completely change the product being offered and make it much more like a Britannica, which is not viable as a free offering, but much more reliable.
ReplyDeleteJonathan