Often discussions about the Internet’s horizontal and decentralized orientation call into question the role of experts (read also: filters, gatekeepers, elites, etc.) in an information society. There is a divided camp between those who believe that this transition from vertical broadcast and print media is detrimental and those who champion the democratizing potential of knocking the tower down (or at least reclaiming it for the people).
It’s important to keep in mind that media are arguably the most influential institutions in our society. The role of the Fourth Estate to hold the government accountable is a cornerstone to our democratic process. In a country like the United States, we live under a privatized media empire of six corporations who provide almost everything we know about what is happening the world around us, how we should behave, and what we need to consume.
We have returned several times to the idea in this course that governments are increasingly intertwined with corporations – and that arguably these companies are indeed more powerful than governments themselves. If the role of the press is to hold the government accountable, then what happens when the corporations that control the press are more powerful than the government?
It is difficult to grapple with issues surrounding accuracy of information when our educational system focuses more on advocating for a medium of truth (print, libraries, etc.) as opposed to giving us the critical thinking skills to interpret and analyze all the raw data (information). It would be a mistake to assume that if it has been printed it is true. Though opponents to horizontal communications like Wikipedia will slight the “wisdom of crowds” by pointing to a series of fact-checkers, editors, and other professionals who assess the accuracy of printed information, the reality is that far too often what gets printed is still grotesquely inaccurate.
If we are to progress in a digital world we have to deal with these issues directly. What I think is harder for people to deal with in addressing these complexities is the threat they pose to our sense of reality itself. We are all simply people exposing beliefs and ideas about the world around us. The displacement of gatekeepers, the removal of barriers to entry, present a direct threat to a hierarchy of truth. Historian Marshall Poe writes:
The power of the community to decide, of course, asks us to reexamine what we mean when we say that something is “true.” We tend to think of truth as something that resides in the world. The fact that two plus two equals four is written in the stars — we merely discovered it. But Wikipedia suggests a different theory of truth. Just think about the way we learn what words mean. Generally speaking, we do so by listening to other people (our parents, first). Since we want to communicate with them (after all, they feed us), we use the words in the same way they do.
Wikipedia says judgments of truth and falsehood work the same way. The community decides that two plus two equals four the same way it decides what an apple is: by consensus. Yes, that means that if the community changes its mind and decides that two plus two equals five, then two plus two does equal five. The community isn’t likely to do such an absurd or useless thing, but it has the ability. (“The Hive.” Atlantic Monthly, September 2006, 86-94).
Grappling with these new technologies create whole new barriers for understanding, but they also increase our communication potential. Instead of relying on an assumption that certain mediums deliver accuracies, we need to learn to challenge all information we are presented with directly – to sort it, research it, and determine its validity based on whatever networks and means are available to us (traditional or otherwise). Granted, not everyone has the resources to devote a great deal of time to these efforts. This is why we make choices on what sources we trust for information. What the digital world challenges is the idea that these sources need to come from the vertical empires of experts and their institutions. Wikipedia and open-source software show us that top-down is no longer the only option.
