internet authority

In the old days of visiting libraries and reading books...just kidding...I still do that. Anyhow, I do remember a time not too long ago when some people had the belief that anything that made it to print must be true. Then, as publishing and production costs become more affordable, the rest of the riffraff (and the valued voice of the previously unheard) were able to print their own literature. Eventually, it became common knowledge that you had to check multiple sources before accepting anything as fact.

The internet seems to be playing out its own version of this same process. Initially, the internet was so geek-speak limited that only the smartest and wisest computer nerds with a strong grasp on solid fact had access to it, or so it was believed by some. Educational accounts were the first signs of everyday users being able to post possible misinformed data, usually in the form of student research papers and reports. As the internet grew more marketing-oriented and not as limited to informational content, it has also grown into a multiheaded monster mixing fact with fiction, and data with deception.

As every corner of the web is being investigated for monetary opportunities, it will be interesting to see how we, as users, discern fact from fiction, opinions from paid advertising. While I personally strive to only include opinions that are my own, and don't allow things like PayPerPost opportunities to influence my opinion, there are many others who don't hold the same interest in maintaining their integrity.

It is common knowledge that all of the major news networks who provide us with our daily dose of "fact" (or fiction) have an agenda to push - that of marketers, advertisers, the government, and other media "pushers". Some see this as the ramblings of conspiracy theorists, but all you need to do is catch the latest cover story about our economy and how Americans need to "spend more" to see how advertising intent has crept into so-called "news".

With recent Web 2.0 developments, and the popularity of blogs and community websites, I believe that "news" media is in a transition. It is easy to see how users are changing their basis of authority when you see how many users are reading certain individual blogs, compared to visitors of traditional corporation-backed news sites. I find it refreshing, but it will also be challenging, as the efforts of the corporations and their advertising budgets have already hit the blogging market in a number of ways. While at this time, most of them seem content to have their products and services framed within a context of "reviews" or "buzz", there will come a time when the line is crossed and disinformation, albeit highly paid disinformation, will be the order of the day.

I have hope for this species, though. Although web marketers have become increasingly clever with their advertising techniques, the human psyche seems to have taken on an embedded attitude of skepticism while it is engaged with the internet. I see this as the necessary relation to the inherent dangers and fraud of a global medium with no single body of overseeing law, and I hope that the internet never becomes so mind-numbingly sterile that we feel the need to "relax into the abyss" as David Thrussell once put it.

So I guess that there are advantages to the fact that the internet isn't 100% safe - it keeps us aware. It keeps us questioning. It keeps us skeptical of lofty promises. And hopefully, it will give us our own methods of evaluating internet authority, instead of believing what modern print, tv, and radio media has sold us in the past.