Martin,
From where I am standing your comments appear a bit strong. I find the
internet invaluable don't get me wrong, but I don't see it any less
uncontaminated than other media.
You argue there is "no central keeper of knowledge in a network, only
curators of particular views". I have my website at Geocities which was
recently bought out by Yahoo who in turn now tells me what I put on my site
is technically their property. If I read information on the internet,
newspaper, tv, or radio, even in this so called era of decentered truth, it
still carries the Reuters stamp of approval. In contrast to the internet
offering a more democratic notion of truth I very much see a dictatorship
emerging that should not be ignored.
In the states we have portals (Yahoo, excite, microsoft, AOL) that offer
free websites so the everyday Joe or Jane can participate in the production
of truth. While this is liberating in a sense it also guarantees an audience
for the spread of information. If I have a website at a particular portal I
am more likely to get my information from that portal.
They now talk of the new "3 C's" - commerce, communication, and community -
in that one's subjectivity is not in oppossition to commerce but essential
for the commerce to take place. So, yes your right that commerce has not
squelched these other voices because by embracing those voices they are
guaranteed future profits. Those subjectivities are very much pots of gold
because any portal without a vibrant community will lose advertising $'s and
partnerships with their "family of services".
Nate
-----Original Message-----
From: Martin Ryder [mailto:mryder@carbon.cudenver.edu]
Sent: Sunday, January 23, 2000 2:35 AM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: The internet and disinformation
Ken writes:
> The internet's ability to store and make available huge amounts of
> information makes it also ideal for spreading disinformation.
The most refreshing characteristic of the Internet is it's lacking claim
to uncontaminated truth. A source of pure knowledge in a highly connected
and deeply fragmented world is as unlikely as a source of clean water in a
flood zone. The World Wide Web is the first mass medium that places truth
completely in the hands of the reader. There is no canon, no central
keeper of knowledge in a network, only curators of particular views.
Distributed, headless, emergent wholeness displaces the self annointed
high priests of rational, objective truth.
To Martin O's point, the past year has seen an explosion of affordances
for online commercialism and commodity exchange. This has not squelched
the voices of common people participating as never before in the Great
Conversation. The Internet is a subjective medium in every sense of the
word. While it hosts highly mediated environments that promote passivity
and consumerism, it also opens countless opportunities for active human
expression. With such expression comes fallibility and misinformation.
But with it comes the awakening of a subjective voice that has been too
long silent.
Martin R.
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