Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: The amorality of Web 2.0
"I'm all for blogs and blogging. (I'm writing this, ain't I?) But I'm not blind to the limitations and the flaws of the blogosphere - its superficiality, its emphasis on opinion over reporting, its echolalia, its tendency to reinforce rather than challenge ideological extremism and segregation. Now, all the same criticisms can (and should) be hurled at segments of the mainstream media. And yet, at its best, the mainstream media is able to do things that are different from - and, yes, more important than - what bloggers can do. Those despised "people in a back room" can fund in-depth reporting and research. They can underwrite projects that can take months or years to reach fruition - or that may fail altogether. They can hire and pay talented people who would not be able to survive as sole proprietors on the Internet. They can employ editors and proofreaders and other unsung protectors of quality work. They can place, with equal weight, opposing ideologies on the same page. Forced to choose between reading blogs and subscribing to, say, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Atlantic, and the Economist, I will choose the latter. I will take the professionals over the amateurs.
But I don't want to be forced to make that choice."
I found Jeff Jarvis' rebuttal a little extreme
"So Carr is really saying two things: He is saying that the professionals are better than the amateurs because they are paid. I don’t buy that. And he distrusts the amateurs, which is saying that he distrusts the public those professionals supposedly serve.."
I'm pretty sure Carr isn't saying that, at least, that's not how I read it.. what I read was that professional publications can afford things like editors, copyeditors and factcheckers. And that makes their work better-- which it typically is. And that the death of these organizations' ability to fund themselves means the death of editing and fact checking. Which would be sad.
Why do people involved with the new media feel like they need to take such an extreme positions? Why do big media's faults have to mean we though out big media's virtues? (baby, bathwater people?)
Tagging good, taxonomy evil! Blogs good, New York times evil! It's all rather random, since most bloggers love some form of big media, be it New York Times or the tiny but still quite professional Onion.
It's clear we are in a period of change... bloggers are growing in power, which increases their operating costs, which means going professional, which means advertising, which means a number of advertising networks have been created to serve them, which means soon they'll be changed into... big media. or medium media. "Hey, if you would just stop swearing, Downy will give you 80 thousand dollars this year" "Can you tone down the Iraq war stuff? We've got blockbuster looking to give you 120 thousand over the next two years"
Then they'll face what the big guys have had to for a long while-- separation of editorial with sales to keep integrity, or they'll sell out. They'll add a few people to their staff to make sure the copy is up to snuff, to draw in more users, more advertisers. They'll get better in some ways, worse in others.
This is not a revolution, this is the seventh wave, and it may be the biggest one now, but not bigger than the 14th, or 21st wave coming next. Some will get swept out to sea, and others will survive. We'll see who is who. Now our big media is fox, the times, knight ridder, in a few years it may be the times, kottke and boingboing.
Looking forward to it.
I can hope, anyhow. Because they don't seem to be punished in this life.
Wal-Mart Memo Suggests Ways to Cut Employee Benefit Costs - New York Times
I don't shop there. While I can't keep up with who is evil and who is not most of the time, Walmart does such a good job of being immoral on a regular basis, I have a easy way to be reminded not to shop there.
If you have been living under a rock, like me, you may have missed Jess's model for design maturity (pdf) .
If you ever were thinking of abandoning your title in favor of living design, now is a good time, a better time than ever. Check out his blog post as well.
I'm getting very nervous one will arrive before the other, so excuse my lack of posting. and don't forget to watch flickr for when the really exciting photos show up.....
Also, random parental advice welcome.
Reading Ted Rheingold's Web Journal, I was excited. Just yesterday I'd come to the conclusion that Web 1.0 was all about technology, Web 2.0 was all about human behavior when I read
today I heard Ross Mayfield succinctly say Web 2.0 is made of people while Scott Rafer explains the phenom as the Participation Generation. I love those two because they acknowledges that participation of the tool users is just as significant as the tool makers who sincerely made the tools for just those users.
It's a much better way to think about the change (and we all sense the change, even if we don't all necessarily think it's worth versioning) than focusing on Ajax and webaps.
Looking at "What is Web 2.0"
They present this list
Web 1.0 Web 2.0
DoubleClick --> Google AdSense
Ofoto --> Flickr
Akamai --> BitTorrent
mp3.com --> Napster
Britannica Online --> Wikipedia
personal websites --> blogging
evite --> upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation --> search engine optimization
page views --> cost per click
screen scraping --> web services
publishing --> participation
content management systems --> wikis
directories (taxonomy) --> tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness --> syndication
Most of these fit the conceptional model well... ofoto is to managing photos as flickr is to sharing and publishing photos
mp3 is to finding and acquiring music as Napster (was) to sharing and exchanging music
CMS's are to managing content as wikis are for collaborative writing spaces.
Taxonomies are for managing content via metadata as tagsonomies are for sharing and opining on content via metadata.
In each case we go from a patriarchal management system to a collective or personal sharing/cocreation model. Some don't quite fit, but it's interesting to see how many do.
From Good Morning Silicon Valley
when Chan refused to settle on behalf of her daughter, the record companies regrouped and now want to go after the teenager directly -- but first they want the court to push Mom aside and appoint a legal guardian in this matter.and
Tanya Andersen, a 41-year-old disabled single mother living in Oregon, is not only contesting RIAA allegations of piracy ... she's countersuing
The tactics of the RIAA obscene and bullying. The court document for Tanya's suit paints an ugly picture (and is one of the most amusing legal documents I've ever read)
Settlement Support Center also falsely claimed that Ms. Andersen had “been viewed” by MediaSentry downloading “gangster rap” music at 4:24 a.m. Settlement Support Center also falsely claimed that Ms. Andersen had used the login name “gotenkito@kazaa.com.” Ms. Andersen does not like “gangster rap,” does not recognize the name “gotenkito,” is not awake at 4:24 a.m. and has never downloaded music.
Awareness is the answer to this kind of behavior, of course. The more suits that come forward, the more the record industry will be viewed for what it is- a cowardly greedy monopoly incapable of innovation and doomed to a slow death.
Chris Baum's "Arc of the Organization" is a excellent riff on the trend of small entrapreneurs taking apart large corporations' living. I've seen it as well as newspapers loose revenue streams to dedicated services such as craig's list and ebay.
It's about mobility, and the question is, can a large organization ever get mobile enough to stay competitive, or is the nature of size simply slowness?
