Thompson highlights that the internet opens way for innovation, he also does mention that the internet does help to promote freedom and freedom of speech, and highlights the fact that the internet is a source of "the livelihood, social lives, health, civic engagement, education and leisure of hundreds of millions of people (and growing every day)."
2) What are the negatives or dangers linked to the development of the internet?
The openness of the internet acts as a positive and a negative, while it does open way for innovation; it also results in the activity occurring on the internet to also be very hard to track, making spam hard to stop without specialized software; with the internet growing everyday, more illegal activities such as the selling of narcotics and firearms becomes far easier and convenient due to the naturally unregulated nature of the internet.
3) What does ‘open technology’ refer to? Do you agree with the idea of ‘open technology’?
Open technology is the idea of complete openness to where a computer can connect to, what it can run and what it can do. This idea plays into the want for complete of equal opportunity, social justice, free expression etc. While the methods in which this can be done seem simple enough; having software that can run anywhere, having companies that profit off of the separation removed etc, the chances of this happening are very slim for one main reason; almost all "tech" businesses profit off of this, this includes apple (they have special software that can only work on certain computers, violating the idea of open technology), along with a wide variety of other companies. Due to this the possibility is small, but having open technology does sound convenient. Although with this being said, Google has decided to open source their technology, so this open technology future may not be as far fetched as I thought it would be.
4) Bill Thompson outlines some of the challenges and questions for the future of the internet. What are they?
The major challenge he outlines is the openness of the internet, that along with it being unregulated makes the internet difficult to handle; and the question he leaves if what we could do for the internet and it could do for us.
5) Where do you stand on the use and regulation of the internet? Should there be more control or more openness? Why?
I naturally believe in the idea of freedom of speech, but the issue here is that when the concept of freedom of speech was officially developed, it did not take into account the idea of a globally connected world where opinions and ideas from different cultures can interact and collide; that's the issue we face today, if we were to develop a truly open internet and unregulated access for anything and everything, we're looking at confirmed conflict between groups. An argument against this would be to only regulate content that would offend, or would be seen as radical, this in itself raises even more issues; how do we decide what could be seen as offensive, how do we ultimately determine what could be seen as an extreme idea, e.g. Saudi Arabia would see any form of mocking towards their royalty as an extreme and violating offence, while individuals in other countries would see that as a basic form of scrutiny, a core aspect of modern society and governance. Same could be said towards conservative ideas of Islam being spread in the US through the internet, that in itself can be seen as a threat on the American ethics the nation was built on by some Americans. A solution to this could be to have each nation have their own regulation to what they deem offensive; well this would not only be almost exactly be what we have today, but this solution also goes against the idea of open technology and freedom of speech. This argument could go on for pages, but overall, I believe that there should be freedom of speech, even if it offends you; you can't be selective over transparency and freedom
Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody
Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody charts the way social media and connectivity is changing the world. Read Chapter 3 of his book, ‘Everyone is a media outlet’, and answer the following questions:
1) How does Shirky define a ‘profession’ and why does it apply to the traditional newspaper industry?
Shirky in a sense defines the premise of a profession as quite narcissistic "For people with a professional outlook, it's hard to understand how something that isn't professionally produced could affect them".
Shirky applies this to the traditional newspaper with his father. Howard and other newspaper professionals would only take other professionally made media products seriously, this meant two things; one, that the rise of the internet was inevitable as it was all made and curated by amateurs, and two, the traditional news industry did not take the idea of being made obsolete seriously
2) What is the question facing the newspaper industry now the internet has created a “new ecosystem”?
If Newspapers going to survive at all with the new environment and "Ecosystem" that the internet has created.
3) Why did Trent Lott’s speech in 2002 become news?
It became news the weekend after the birthday party due to republican and democrat blogger .
4) What is ‘mass amateurisation’?
Mass amateurisation is a phenomenon that's come from the internet, where the mass audience have now had the ability to make their own content.
5) Shirky suggests that: “The same idea, published in dozens or hundreds of places, can have an amplifying effect that outweighs the verdict from the smaller number of professional outlets.” How can this be linked to the current media landscape and particularly ‘fake news’?
This idea could be linked to the quantity over quality idea when it comes to sharing of news, often times when someone see's some viral news or event, and it has thousands if not millions of shares, retweets, likes, upvotes etc, the audience, or the reader/consumer will more likely to accept that as fact, and completely disregard anything that says otherwise due to the amount of people that have acknowledged that to be true. Although the issue of people insisting to not read the actual news article, and basing their opinion/reaction on just the headline is also a large culprit as well when it comes to the oversharing of news. Fake news is the prime example of this phenomena.
6) What does Shirky suggest about the social effects of technological change? Does this mean we are currently in the midst of the internet “revolution” or “chaos” Shirky mentions?
Due to the sharing of information being so wildly available, the internet can be used as a force of change, hence us being in the middle of an internet revolution
7) Shirky says that “anyone can be a publisher… [and] anyone can be a journalist”. What does this mean and why is it important?
Th meaning is quite literal, anyone can be a publisher and anyone can be a journalist due to the wide reaches that the internet has, it can reach almost anyone anywhere, and due to that it's become easier to become both professions
8) What does Shirky suggest regarding the hundred years following the printing press revolution? Is there any evidence of this “intellectual and political chaos” in recent global events following the internet revolution?
Shirky states that following the printing press, some traditional jobs that were popular before the printing press became obsolete, hence came anxiety from people who worked those jobs as they feared their futures, the same can be said about the way newspapers and magazines have reacted towards the internet e.g. over exaggeration and demonisation of the internet.
9) Why is photography a good example of ‘mass amateurisation’?
It's a profession that quite literally anyone with a camera can pursue, this includes smart phone cameras too
10) What do you think of Shirky’s ideas on the ‘End of audience’? Is this era of ‘mass amateurisation’ a positive thing? Or are we in a period of “intellectual and political chaos” where things are more broken than fixed?
This is a question that can't really be viewed objectively, the benefits and the negatives are plentiful, but seeing that I have a bias towards the internet age due to being brought up by it, I'm excited to see how it will progress and evolve over time; but it's easy to see how people who had their livelihood being ruined by being made obsolete because of the internet would see it in an entirely different light.
A/A* extension work: read Chapter 1 ‘It takes a village to find a phone’ and Chapter 4 ‘Publish, then filter’ to further understand Shirky’s ideas concerning the ‘End of audience’.
