Clay Shirky: End of audience blog

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

The internet is only that wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press in a single connection. It’s only vital to the livelihood,social lives, health, civic engagement,education and leisure of hundreds of millions of people

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

fraud, scams, ripoffs 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. But even if you agree with me, deciding what we mean by ‘open’ is far from straightforward 

Those things count as ‘open’ to me, but you might have a very different view. You might not even think that it is a good thing: openness brings its own risks.

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

In some respects, today’s internet is a vast, unregulated, worldwide experiment in openness. It is already having significant impact because of the largely unanticipated consequences of the global adoption of a set of technologies that were built around an assumption of openness without any real concern for the broader implications. We cannot simply pull down the walls to the unimpeded flow of information and expect no consequences, so while I continue to think that the real benefits of the network will only be seen if we make it as open as possible, that openness carries a price.

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

I think that there should be freedom in expression when it comes to the use of the internet, however I also strongly believe that some aspects especially relating to health and safety of those who use the internet should be more strictly regulated due to the vast and unpredictable nature of the internet as the truth and lies can be intertwined and hard to differentiate from.

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. Most professions exist because there is a scarce resource that requires ongoing management:

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

We've long regarded the newspaper as a sensible object because it has been such a stable one, but there isn't any logi- cal connection among its many elements: stories from Iraq, box scores from the baseball game, and ads for everything from shoes to real estate all exist side by side in an idiosyn- cratic bundle. What holds a newspaper together is primarily the cost of paper, ink, and distribution; a newspaper is what-ever group of printed items a publisher can bundle together and deliver profitably.

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

Trent Lott, the senior senator from Mississippi and then majority leader, gave a speech at Strom Thurmond's hundredth birthday party. Thurmond, a Republican senator from South Carolina, had recently retired after a long political career, which had included a 1948 run for president on an overtly segregationist platform. 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 president, 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.

This would have been a classic story of negative press coverage altering a political career-except that the press didn't actually cover the story, at least not at first. Indeed, the press almost completely missed the story. This isn't to say that they intentionally ignored it or even actively suppressed it; several reporters from national news media heard Lott speak, but his remark simply didn't fit the standard template of news. Because Thurmond's birthday was covered as a salutary event instead of as a political one, the actual contents of the evening were judged in advance to be relatively unimportant. A related assumption is that a story that is not important one day also isn't important the next, unless something has changed. Thurmond's birthday party happened on a Thursday night, and the press gave Lott's remarks very little coverage on Friday.

4) What is ‘mass amateurization’?

The future presented by the internet is the mass amateurization of publishing and a switch from "Why publish this ?" to "Why not?"

The question that mass amateurization poses to traditional media is "What happens when the costs of reproduction and distribution go away? What happens when there's nothing unique about publishing anymore, because users can do it for themselves?" We are now starting to see that question being answered.

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’?

The idea that a lot of publishers can all give their own takes while bouncing off of each others articles and publishings creates an environment that discourages the truth from coming out as all the outlets need to do is make money from a catchy headline and have a modicum of citations to feel content with the validity of the statements they are making leading to a sectorisation of content and a lack of truth and valid statistics and sources to reliably back up their points and stories.

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?

social effects lag behind technological ones by decades, real revolutions don't involve an orderly 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. Despite the replacement of their core function, however, the scribes' sense of themselves as essential remained undiminished.

I think that the internet is in a sense going through a revolution as there is a lot of chaos in the online landscape.

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

The consumers becoming publishers or  even journalists points to the revolution of technology letting people to converse with others and share their thoughts many-to-many whilst being globally accessible. This is seen as important as anyone can write online instead of getting a job as a publisher through the hard way.

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?

There would be a loss of professional control when it comes to print as the internet taking over has taken the job. Evidence for the 'intellectual and political chaos' is shown by the video blogger Josh Wolf who refused to hand over video of a 2005 demonstration he observed in San Francisco causing him to go to jail.

9) Why is photography a good example of ‘mass amateurization’?

Its a form of production where almost anyone can take up and create something without anyone else's interference.

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 believe that mass amateurization is a good thing for his idea towards the end of an audience since it allows the more engaged audience to try out new things. According to Scott Bradner, a former trustee of the Internet Society: "The internet means you don't have to convince anyone else that something is a good idea before trying it." With the increased access, people can now master vocations that were previously considered vital. However, these actions result in unprofessional publications, even if they are supported by sources and people on the internet. For example, posting news or facts without expert verification might cost many people their careers.