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Open Media, Take Two: The Sensemakers
Open Media offer one of the world's most badly-needed services: sensemaking.The dropping cost of information is driving much of the global economy. So it makes sense that organizing the information available online is a booming industry, the most vibrant new form of media.
Connecting information consumers with information may become one of the defining elements of successful media in the 21st Century. Open Media reverse the traditional flow of information, practiced by institutions from governments to churches to conventional journalism. Open Media outlets don't offer information mandated by a handful of executives, editors, producers and writers, although they do reflect different points-of-view and they filter to varying degrees. Through Open Media, sensemaking takes place not only among individual users, but among readers, users and people who link to Open Media sites. These sites are continually spotting, collating, submitting, archiving, sharing, linking and discussing information. Open Media was -- is -- being engineered and pioneered by the young, whose technical expertise is far ahead of most of the people responsible for raising and educating them.
They are in the right place at the right time with the right skills. Some of the most prescient technological observers saw the need both for Open Media and sensemaking decades ago. At the end of World War II, even as University of Pennsylvania scientists were patching together the first electronic computer, federal official Vannevar Bush warned that society was creating information far faster than it could make use of.
"The difficulty seems to be that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make use of the record," Bush wrote. "The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily-important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships."
Not any more. Bush would probably be shocked with wonder if he could spend a few minutes browsing on the Net. But all over the world, as tens of millions come online, popular awareness of an "information explosion" becomes daily more acute. The quantity of information accessible by personal computer -- now reaching far beyond the file system of a single computer to complex systems all over the planet -- has increased by a factor of millions.
Citizens of the modern age increasingly bewildered, overwhelmed by the extraordinary quantities of data coming at them from all sides. They are also increasingly restive and disappointed with media that make information choices for them, including choices they don't want or need. Before the Net, they had no choice but to patronize such top-down media. Now they do, and in growing numbers, they are leaving behind their old information industries and suppliers, from newspapers to network TV.
This leaves the media of the future in flux, up for grabs. Only a handful of people understand the specialized skills and systems of a technological society, both miraculous and unnerving to the point that they are driving users nuts. Americans in particular lead a hyperactive information life. And their media -- the institutions supposed to help guide and inform them -- have been as overwhelmed as they are.
As reported by Mark Stefik in his book The Internet Edge, Bush's 1945 observation -- he was at the time director of the Federal Office of Scientific Research and Development, and one of the most prominent scientists in the country -- led to that now-familiar metaphor, the "information explosion," popularized in Alvin Toffler's 1970 book Future Shock.
The very word "explosion" has ominious connotations; it's not benign or welcoming. It suggests a powerful force unleashed suddenly and destructively. One way to contain the information explosion would be to reduce the amount of information; that's not going to happen. Information drives the global economy, and its price is going down all the time.
A better solution -- and a hallmark of the new forms of Open Media evolving all across the Internet -- is to help people keep up with the information most relevant to their interests. This is precisely where traditional -- or Closed -- media have stumbled. Closed Media sites -- Salon, Slate, Inside.com -- struggle with the idea that evolutionary forms of media aren't about delivering opinions, commentary, pre-selected and reported stories involving chosen agendas. Quite the opposite; they're about permitting individuals -- using the most interactive aspects of new technology -- to shape their own information needs and values. Open Media use new forms of information architecture to permit people to define, seek and use the information they want. Closed media operate by permitting a handful of individuals to select information and distribute it, in the hopes that people will want and buy it.
Information explosions have occurred before, but this one is a hummer. The volume of information available in the developed world has been steadily increasing for hundreds of years, but seldom as rapidly as in the past generation. The Net, among other media, zaps information that was once available only via "enclave" institutions -- schools, libraries, publishing companies, churches, universities -- to whomever cares to see it. Open Media is inherently political, since information has traditionally been carefully parceled out to people (especially younger people) in small doses by educational, religious and other institutions. The reality of Open Media is that access to information by younger people is no longer monopolized by closed institutions and media organizations. The grownups don't like it one bit.
Any kid with a computer has access to vast amounts of the world's information archives, perhaps the most frightening reality of the Internet to most older Americans and political figures. The young are the dominant sensemakers of our culture, and perhaps the only ones qualified to assume that role.
Far beyond Vannevar Bush's imaginings, information is almost universally within reach to those who can afford computing. Yet those people complain constantly, increasingly, that they have no idea how to use it productively, or how to gather, absorb and store it all. Incalculable amounts of information are missed or lost by computers daily due to confusion, lack of storage, printing or other technical problems. Those of us online are all librarians now, all media moguls in various odd ways. We all struggle to make sense out of the overwhelming information choices that surround us.
Visions of Open Media aren't entirely new, either. Thomas Jefferson repeatedly argued for a de-centralized press through which individual citizens, politicians and merchants would fire ideas at one another. In l961, Pentagon scientist and Net visionary J.C.R. Licklider, who initiated much of the early funding for what became the Net, described an "information desk," which Vannevar Bush had visualized years earlier.
"The average person will have his intellectual Ford or Cadillac -- comparable to the investment he makes now in an automobile -- or ...he will rent one from a public utility that handles information processing as Consolidated Edison handles electric power. In business, government, and education the concept of 'desk' may have changed from passive to active: a desk may be primarily a display-and-control station in a telecommuncation-telecomputation system -- and its most vital part may be the cable ('umbilical cord') that connects it, via a wall socket, into the procognitive utility net."
Bush's concept of an intelligent desk has evolved into a desktop. And in between the average person and the information he or she seeks are media, increasingly Open Media, that helps them organize the new world they face. Search engines, Web sites like this one, messaging systems (ICQ, AIM, Hotlines) Weblogs (like www.camworld.com), individual Web pages, movie and consumer sites (www.imdb.com, www.deja.com) research and software sites -- their mission is remarkably uniform -- sensemaking.
Stefik estimates the average number of links off an individual Web page to be about thirteen. Individual searching makes sense for the technologically skilled, but most people who set off on the Net and the Web in search of information quickly get lost. "Even completely automated web walkers, which hop across web pages at electronic speeds, now take days or even weeks to sweep through all the documents on the Internet," writes Stefik.
Though the number of documents online grows steadily, much of the information on the Net and the Web never gets indexed. Stekif believes that as digital-rights technology becomes more widely integrated into the Net infrastructure, more documents will be available on the Net for a fee.
Meanwhile, Open Media are becoming increasingly important in helping make people aware of the news and information available to them. Weblogs in particular are being increasingly reliable, trusted sources of information as well as new focal points for growing, enduring and increasingly influential communities.
No wonder Open Media are the premier medium of the young, and are also gaining audience, market share and revenue.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Katz talks about the impact of "open media", but only mentions en passant that its impact is limited to those who have regular access to the Internet and who seek out such sources. Many people are content to go no farther than their radio or TV for news. In developing countries (and still, in many developed ones), some people go no farther than friends and family for current news.
No strangleholds on information access are being broken. Many major news sites on the Web are related in some way to real-world news providers that are in turn owned by larger conglomerates. Unsurprisingly, the corporations that hoodwink and confound us in the real world are trying to do so in the virtual one. The only difference in this regard is that in the virtual world, it's much easier to hear an individual's opinion.
The virtual world can be likened to a vast, long street lined with shops. Billboards and salesmen are everywhere, hawking their wares much as they do in reality. Large media companies dispense the news as normal, and the politicians make their presence felt by regulating the way the street operates, even though few of them have yet ventured onto it.
Also on this street, jostling passersby and one another, are millions of people wearing sandwich boards and ranting about their topics of choice. Some of those people have formed enclaves (some more exclusive than others), where favorite topics are bandied about, flame wars started, and inside jokes kept alive.
Jon, the virtual world is really not that different from the real world. If there is such a thing as "open media", the only reason it is more visible in the virtual world is because it's easier to self-publish there.
This isn't revolutionary. In the long run, it may not even be important. But it is interesting, and it is useful.
www.alarmist.org
"Closed media operate by permitting a handful of individuals to select information and distribute it, in the hopes that people will want and [to] buy it. "
I think this is really the crux of it. This is old media in a sentence. And, as I see it, there is no problem with this happily co-existing with Open Media. Sure, one or the other might lose or gain some mindshare, but it's not, as those Linux distro millionaires like to say, a zero sum game.
By permitting a handful of individuals to select information, you are doing most people a big favour. Compare the Camel book to c.l.p.m. Compare a well written Linux HowTo with a slashdot 'ask slashdot' thread.
Each of the Open forms has strengths and (severe) weaknesses, and likewise the Closed form. They complement each other.
I don't see the big conflict here, only a series of small ones as we work out just what kind of information is better handled in either an Open or Closed way.
I will continue to buy the writings of those individuals who have an unusual ability to select and present information and ideas. I will continue to read with interest my mailing lists, my slashdot posts, and my other sources of open discussion. There's no conflict.
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Indeed, slashdot is the perfect example of this Open Media - except the Open Media is so full of Closed Minds (as in a common slashdot slogan) that it's hardly open at all. Honest opinions get termed as "flamebait", and people restructure their views to the point where it no longer conflicts to the community.
Indeed, slashdot is the perfect example. When people learn to play the community game of slashdot by adjusting to become a well-formed poster, they lose their original opinions (which may have been "flamebait" or just plain "overrated") and turn into a member of the community sheep. We are, as I said above, losing our ability to think individually by letting other people (the moderators) think for us.
Once upon a time ago, there was more diversity in radio programming. Why? Because it was a new medium, there were fewer restrictions and programmers were trying to find an audience. Because of that, you had a variety of programs and diverse personalities that reflected America and its' growing pains.
Then there was television. Again, TV station owners, producers and directors tried anything to get people to first buy one of those boxes and then turn the darn thing on. Strange, live programming was the only thing available and on air personalities regularly reminded viewers that the technology was new and who knew what would happen.
Both mediums began that way and both mediums were eventually formulated for maximum audience penetration and ratings. Both mediums were eventually controlled by singular entities determined to controll a "stall" of outlets which would giveway to the media companies we have today. FCC rules have been relaxed to allow for this centralized control.
The result is a handful of media companies whose products strangely resemble each other. Their news offerings duplicate opinions rather than factual information gathering. Their programming runs industry trends (gameshows or westerns for instance) rather than innovative product offerings.
This same thing will eventually happen to many Internet information sources as the cost of technology, marketing in a crowded market and talent to run and attract an audience requires capital beyond the average startup company.
Online media outlets with suffucient name recognition and subscriber lists will be acquired by ever larger growning companies, some in existance and some new. Then the previous experience of radio and television will be repeated.
Wonderful.
any time you have someone organize information, they are putting a subjective stamp and assigning value to it so that it is heirarchically organized in some shelving system.
/. is not actually Open Media... it's just hidden corporatism.
forget organizing information. neural network it. develop better searching mechanisms. and spare us the Open Media fluff... Open Media such as
Seriously, I don't think there is an explosion of information at all. The pre-Internet days were already brimming over with more information than any one person could hope to process anyway.
What the net has offered is an explosion of repitition. For example, a Google search of buffy the vampire slayer this morning produced 120,999 hits. I like that show, but is there really enough to say about it that you could fill over 120 thousand "pages" with it? Half of those hits were probably just copies of the drinking game (drink if Buffy's bra strap is showing, drink if Cordy gives unwelcome fashion advice, etc.)
The information boom happened in the 17th Centry, not the 20th. Since then we have just been inventing ways of getting our news faster.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Isn't Slashdot a form of Open Media? The responses get rated by other readers, and a group consensus is formed over time. The "first post" wave of people gets moderated down, and what's deemed informative, etc.. goes up. So, here we are, it's already being done.
--Mike--
There is _NOT_ an information explosion going on, there is a DATA explosion going on. Data is defined as raw facts, information is those facts sorted, collated and presented in a useful form.
In fact, I'd say there is an "information implosion" going on right now - there is more data, but information is harder to find, as there is more chaff being added to the wheat of the internet.
Do a web search on just about anything these days; you'll be guaranteed at least one pr0n link, a whole bunch of useless sites put up to carry banner ads, and somewhere, finally, the information you wanted.
I'm really looking forward to the next set of search engines; curren "innovations" such as Google are making progress, but there have been no real leaps and bounds made to turn raw data into information.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
1) Just because there is a world full of information, doesn't mean you need to sort and access all of it.
2) There are millions of items of information you will never need to know.
3) You will not see everything or know everything before you die.
4) You should learn to make sense of things you witness firsthand before you take the word of another person.
5) No matter how much you trust someone else to tell you something (be it `sensemakers' or the media at large), don't trust them as much as you trust what you know from your own experience.
6) Realize that when group X tells group Y what you know and gets it wrong, that what group X tells you about group Y is also suspect.
I'm sure this is redundant and simple, but I find most people don't know how to do this. Then when they hit the net and get inundated with info, they fold faster than superman on laundry day.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
The people who can't make sense of the explosion of information are the people who need a good sense of what to pay attention to and what to ingore. What we don't need is people to sort it out for them - we need to give them the ability to sort it out themselves.
Sensemakers should be the people themselves. Carl Sagan already wrote about it in his excellent book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.
What we end up with when other people make sense of the explosion for us is a nation of people with dependent brains - people who cannot think on their own. People can be their own sensemakers - already, the smartest and well-informed are. The people who cannot make sense will get trapped by pseudoscience, speculation, and oughtright lies (and flamebait *cough* *cough*). We have to make the sense of it ourselves, so that those who don't make sense - only feed us more misinformation - don't win.