Perhaps the oldest joke on the Internet is that "No One Knows You're A Dog". The oldest joke in online community is the reference to an army of trained monkeys. It's the virus that overtook Usenet and can now be seen at Slashdot, Metafilter and DailyKos, among others.
Upon reading those sites, one may reach the unhappy conclusion that the online world is occupied by bilious, bored and juvenile conflict-seekers. But a deeper and protracted reading succeeds in finding gems among the collateral damage.
Which raises the question - who might have an interest in degrading the effective truth capacity of newly open communication channels (since this particular virus has gradually infected every new communication channel)?
The shortlist of suspects is short. There's another word for open. That word? Unregulated. Ahem. What joy, what bliss, to encounter a communication medium where personalities and persons can be conjured without so much as a black bag or mask.
But such is the price of openness. One cannot hold it against any participant for attempting to cajole a given medium into their most-favored-topology. But we can hold it against all who would free-ride on the legitimacy ascribed to truly level playing fields.
Media literacy is reality literacy. There are no conspiracies. Only competitors. And competition is good. But learning to read reality, well, that's an education we're all receiving.
The best way to start classes is to participate. Because you can only identify the invisible silence when you're close enough to an independent observation to detect what's missing. Or what is so obvious that it couldn't possibly be true.
Independent, autonomous data collection is the only means of auditing a media channel. What matters in the end is not words, but actions, and not just actions, but the results of those actions, intended or otherwise.
Love and hate are neither word nor act, but consequence.
Posted by dotpeople at January 15, 2004 01:38 PM | TrackBack