Clay Shirky: End of audience blog tasks

 Clay Shirky: End of audience blog tasks

Media Magazine reading

1) Looking over the article as a whole, what are some of the positive developments due to the internet highlighted by Bill Thompson?

we could email and exchange files with people at other universities. I didn’t actually know I was using the internet at the time and it wasn’t really until 1987 when I was working at Acorn Computers – the Cambridge company that made the BBC Micro and Archimedes computers, and the ARM chip that’s in most of your mobile phones – that I realised that we had access to a way to talk to hundreds of thousands

of other computer users around the world. The network doesn’t care what the data means or how it is used, and that is its main strength and main weakness. It means the Net is open to innovation like email, the web, Spotify or Snapchat – but is also makes it next to impossible to stop spam, abuse or the trading of images of child abuse. These two sides of the network are always with us.The network doesn’t care what the data means or how it is used, and that is its main strength and main weakness. It means the Net is open to innovation like email, the web, Spotify or Snapchat – but is also makes it next to impossible to stop spam, abuse or the trading of images of child abuse. These two sides of the network are always with us.

2) What are the negatives or dangers linked to the development of the internet?

But the bad sides are also hard to ignore. A lot of bullying and abuse takes place there. There’s pornography  that you don’t want to see, and illegal images of child abuse that you might come across. Extremists and radicals can use the network to try to influence people to join their cause, and fraud, scams, rip-offs and malicious software are everywhere. Then there’s the dark web, made up of websites and online services accessed via specialised browsers and tools that make it very hard to identify who is using them, which is used to sell drugs and for other illegal activity.

3) What does ‘open technology’ refer to? Do you agree with the idea of ‘open technology’?

The idea of ‘openness’ lies at the centre of this debate: I believe that if we want an open society based around principles of equality of opportunity, social justice and free expression, we need to build it on technologies which are themselves ‘open’, and that this is the only way to encourage a diverse online culture that allows all voices to be heard.

4) Bill Thompson outlines some of the challenges and questions for the future of the internet. What are they?

Digital information is very hard to control in an open world, because it arrives in a form that allows it to be manipulated by its recipient. When you listen to the radio or record a TV programme, all you can easily do with the result is listen or watch again. You may be able to select which bits you watch, but transforming the stored form is complex and often impossible.

5) Where do you stand on the use and regulation of the internet? Should there be more control or more openness? Why?

The fact that we currently have a mostly open network is no reason to believe that there is a pre-ordained path towards constant improvement as we deploy advanced digital technologies throughout the world. Different choices could be made at every stage, and the outcome is far from determined. It could be a regulated, managed and limited network, of the sort being constructed in China and Libya. Access to dissenting or distinct voices could be limited and managed.

Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody


1) How does Shirky define a ‘profession’ and why does it apply to the traditional newspaper industry?

A profession exists to solve a hard problem, one that re-quires some sort of specialization. Driving a race car requires special training-race car drivers are professionals. Driving an ordinary car, though, doesn't require the driver to belong to a particular profession, because it's easy enough that most adults can do it with a modicum of training. For people with a professional outlook, it's hard to understand how something that isn't professionally produced could affect them-not only is the internet not a newspaper, it isn't a business, or even an institution. There was a kind of narcissistic bias in the profession; the only threats they tended to take seriously were from other professional media outlets, whether newspapers, TV, or radio stations. This bias had them defending against the wrong thing when the amateurs began producing material on their own.

2) What is the question facing the newspaper industry now the internet has created a “new ecosystem”?

The future presented by the internet is the  mass amateurization of publishing and a switch from "Why  publish this ?" to "Why not?"  The two basic organizational imperatives-acquire re sources, and use them to pursue some goal or agenda-saddle  every organization with the institutional dilemma, whether its  goal is saving souls or selling soap. The question that mass  amateurization poses to traditional media is "What happens  when the costs of reproduction and distribution go away?

3) Why did Trent Lott’s speech in 2002 become news?

At Thurmond's hundredth birthday party Lott remembered  and praised Thurmond's presidential campaign of fifty years  earlier and recalled Mississippi's support for it: "I want to say  this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for presi dent, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of  the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all  these problems over all these years, either." Two weeks later,  having been rebuked by President Bush and by politicians and  the press on both the right and the left for his comment, Lott  announced that he would not seek to remain majority leader  in the new Congress.  

4) What is ‘mass amateurisation’?
 Mass amateurization is a result of the radical spread  of expressive capabilities, and the most obvious precedent is  the one that gave birth to the modern world: the spread of the  printing press five centuries.

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 is because if a news article is published along multiple places then the audience are more likely to believe that it is true. however if it it barely published the audience may question its authenticity  especially depending on where the story is published. this links to fake news as if fake news is published along multiple platforms the audience will be more likely to believe its true meaning that fake news will me circulating the internet. 

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?
real revolutions dont involve an or derly transition from point A to point B. Rather, they go from A  through a long period of chaos and only then reach B. In that  chaotic period, the old systems get broken long before new ones  become stable. In the late 1400s scribes existed side by side with  publishers but no longer performed an irreplaceable service. 

7) Shirky says that “anyone can be a publisher… [and] anyone can be a journalist”. What does this mean and why is it important?

This links to a decrease in the authenticity of news as shirky is suggesting that now anyone is able to publish what they would like without being trained or experienced meaning that what is published by people has no truth behind it, it is what they would like to post

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?

The comparison with the printing press doesn't suggest that we are entering a bright new future-for a hundred  years after it started, the printing press broke more things  than it fixed, plunging Europe into a period of intellectual and  political chaos that ended only in the r600s.  This issue became more than academic with the arrest of  Josh Wolf, a video blogger who refused to hand over video of a  2005 demonstration he observed in San Francisco. He served  226 days in prison, far longer than Judith Miller, before being  released.

9) Why is photography a good examples of ‘mass amateurisation’?

• Wikis.
• Photo-sharing.
• YouTube.
• Airbnb.
• Citizen media.
• Social media.
• Editing and publishing.
• 
  

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? 

I think that Mass amateurisation it is the postive as it gives a chance for the audience to add to media and voice their thoughts and opinions by publishing what they would like to publish. This enables the media to have a variety of opinions making it a diverse place to voice matters. However that also comes with the negative side which may have an unprofessional side of publishing and other opinions that people may not agree on .