And judgement for all…

The harshest criticism one can make of web 2.0 is that it is a playground of amateurs. But to pretend that therefore it is of no consequence, seems to be a little short-sighted.

We’re all amateurs in everything except the things we pretend to be experts in. In that sense, we’re all more parts amateur than expert. And it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Edison and Gandhi and the Wright Brothers were all amateurs when they began with the ideas they changed the world with. And according to the stories we’ve grown up with, so were Ekalavya and Hamlet and the Famous Five and Hansel and Gretel. It’s also worth arguing that the current ‘Leader of the Free World’ is an amateur, but see how much we’ve all learnt about statecraft from him!

‘The promoters of Web 2.0 venerate the amateur and distrust the professional. We see it in their unalloyed praise of Wikipedia, and we see it in their worship of open-source software and myriad other examples of democratic creativity. Perhaps nowhere, though, is their love of amateurism so apparent as in their promotion of blogging as an alternative to what they call “the mainstream media.”‘ writes Nicholas Carr in a classic example of binary thinking.

Skinner Layne, on the other hand speaks from a slightly wider perspective when he says,

‘Web 2.0 can take two distinct directions, and it is perhaps the rhetoric of it all that will define the path. Web 2.0 can be the French Revolution of Technology or it can be the American Revolution of Technology. Joseph Schumpeter’s winds of creative destruction are blowing especially hard in the Internet technology world today, with remarkable improvements to our daily lives. But these winds can blow too hard too often, and an even older economic law, the Law of Diminishing Returns, begins to take over. Our wild-eyed radical phase must ultimately give way to some replacement. We cannot permanently be the rebels.’

Layne seems to be hinting that the web, which is also a product of our collective imagination, is constantly learning and evolving and maturing. Just like we do. And it led me to another interesting thought that observes that the Live Web is actually an explosion of postmodern thought.

‘postmodern philosophy is generally viewed as an openness to meaning and authority from unexpected places, so that the ultimate source of authority is the “play” of the discourse itself’, says, that otherwise mostly-unreliable product of amateurish collaboration, the Wikipedia.

I don’t know what you make of it, but for me, this then places a lot of responsibility on individuals and their personal sense of judgement. There are many things on the web, as it is in life, that we never stumble upon until the time has come for us to know about them.

It’s like what we know of the best metaphors that convey wisdom that is almost unapproachable any other way unless one has had a personal experience that triggers the idea contained in the metaphor.

So how are things different from the time when there was no world wide web? Isn’t it also common vanity to be overwhelmed by the symptoms of our own generation and overestimate their effects on what we like to call the human condition? This calls for a concrete example.

Today, googling Ayn Rand with due diligence throws up not just assorted writings by the author, but also from her detractors (Nathaniel Hawthorne for one). Diluting the power of Rand’s rhetoric by putting opposing theories on the same page – something she – like many others – never does herself. While it’s easy to smile and think how this will boggle and mindscrew an immature mind it’s also worth noting that our hypothetical individual has been made privy to many sides of the argument and finds himself weighed with the onerous responsibility (some may call this freedom) to form his own opinions on the subject.

A nine-year-old girl searching Google for Barbie will quite quickly find links to AdiosBarbie.com, to the Barbie Liberation Organization (BLO), and to other, similarly critical sites interspersed among those dedicated to selling and playing with the doll. The contested nature of the doll becomes publicly and everywhere apparent, liberated from the confines of feminist-criticism symposia and undergraduate courses. This simple Web search represents both of the core contributions of the networked information economy. First, from the perspective of the searching girl, it represents a new transparency of cultural symbols. Second, from the perspective of the participants in AdiosBarbie or the BLO, the girl’s use of their site completes their own quest to participate in making the cultural meaning of Barbie. The networked information environment provides an outlet for contrary expression and a medium for shaking what we accept as cultural baseline assumptions. Its radically decentralized production modes provide greater freedom to participate effectively in defining the cultural symbols of our day. These characteristics make the networked environment attractive from the perspectives of both personal freedom of expression and an engaged and self-aware political discourse.
Wealth of Networks,  (p 277), Benkler

Isn’t that also how we interact everyday with youtube and flickr and digg and torrents and blogs? What are tags but a way of saying, ‘it is also this’ – breaking free from the hegemony of the author’s title. It’s in our nature to lose respect for somebody who takes our word for granted. Do your own homework. Read opposing views. As many as you can. Hold them, entertain them, question them, draw your own conclusions. I think this is how many young people who are weaned on the Live Web (as opposed to just television) will learn early to mistrust anything that is said with absolute authority. Interestingly, it is also how we are born to be in the first place.

So to me, interacting with the Live Web will equip us and teach us (some may say, force us) to face the world on the strength of our sense of judgement. One that will be formed and informed only by being open to as many points of view as we can handle. Deal with it. There is no other way.

Because if – to paraphrase a line from a movie i saw recently (‘Quigley Down Under’) – “the American wild west saw people made equal with the Colt revolver”, the nature of the web and the way it seems to be evolving, will render us unequal because of the quality of our own sense of judgement. You cannot buy it readymade from a store. It will be formed, as always, by your early influences. Your family, the cultures you are immersed in, the people and places you grow up with, your education, your library, your unlearning and the questions you will let your mind learn to ask.

That’s a good life lesson to learn in the comparative safety of the internet.

Because any sign, or thought or story or even another person, is only as good as the reader. and what you think about something will say more about you than it will about anything else.

This is as true today as the day language was born.

And if you’re bringing up children it might be a good idea to prepare them for this onslaught of responsibility. This too is as true today as it ever was.