Saturday's Wall Street Journal posed just this question.
Clay Shirley, a deep thinker on the social and economic effects of Internet, says it's a tool for helping us be smarter -- if we wish. I agree. (I'm sure Shirky is thrilled.)
Yes, there is a lot of crap on the Internet. But, as Shirky points out:
Every increase in freedom to create or consume media, from paperback books to YouTube, alarms people accustomed to the restrictions of the old system, convincing them that the new media will make young people stupid. This fear dates back to at least the invention of movable type.
After Gutenberg, the Church was alarmed that the Bible was being translated into language most people could understand. When paperback books became popular, authors bemoaned the lack of literary quality that was flooding the market.
It all comes down to freedom, Shirky concludes. And, I think, a few assumptions: that most people are good, that knowledge is power, and that learning is valuable.
It is tempting to want PatientsLikeMe without the dumb videos, just as we might want scientific journals without the erotic novels, but that's not how media works. Increased freedom to create means increased freedom to create throwaway material, as well as freedom to indulge in the experimentation that eventually makes the good new stuff possible. ... [T]he task before us now is to experiment with new ways of using a medium that is social, ubiquitous and cheap, a medium that changes the landscape by distributing freedom of the press and freedom of assembly as widely as freedom of speech.
No comments:
Post a Comment