Objectivity, News and Healthcare

After the healthcare summit last week, these were the leading headlines on the three major news websites:

FOX: GOP comes out swinging.
CNN: Spirited but civil debate at healthcare summit.
MSNBC: Tempers flair at Obama's healthcare summit.

Each of those titles is really very different. It isn't even that one is 'liberal' and one 'conservative' necessarily or that two are stark opposites of each other. Each network just reached an entirely different conclusion as to how to summarize the summit in a one line title.

In a way, this isn't all bad, as for all news to report the same thing seriously risks discourse and debate being lost in our culture. Having a culture with a singularity around any field of knowledge is a serious impediment to progress and democracy. However, many people do watch one of those networks (or any news source, for that matter) as objective fact. But asking networks to be 100% objective is probably an impossible task as even TV anchors unconsciously give subtle clues to their own personal feelings in their posture, tone of voice and hand gestures. So the problem is not really the lack of subjectivity, but rather that these networks and news services claim to be objective (Fair & Balanced, anyone?) and therefore many people watch them expecting an objective analysis and don't place what they hear in a larger context.

There is nothing wrong with getting news from any of these sources. However, everything must be placed within the proper context of who is doing the reporting. This is another way that context is incredibly important in our society in terms of understanding information that it is presented with. To hear a soundbite and know whether it came from MSNBC or Fox News helps people understand better what they are hearing.

I can only keep my fingers crossed that one day Fox's 'Fair & Balanced' would change to 'Leading Conservative Provider of News.' Does anyone really believe after looking into the issue that Fox is fair and balanced? I hope not. And admitting a political inclination is not a bad thing at all. It's honest. Internet news sources seem to get quickly pinned as liberal or conservative and thus readers can try to place what they read in the proper political and cultural context, and we need to encourage networks to be honest and help people place what is reported on in a better frame of mind.

Context out of Context

The idea of context is an interesting one, and a topic I've briefly covered in some past posts and columns, but I am beginning to realize that the idea of context is much more fundamental and important that it is gnerally given credit for. 

In Jaron Lanier's book You are not a Gadget, he argues that my generation (Generation Y or the Millennials) and the younger generations are loosing context as part of our experience with culture and media. No longer must you read the entire length of a work to understand it, you can just head over to Wikipedia and look at bits and pieces gathered from various sources (sometimes up to 300-400 or more footnotes on a single Wikipedia page) and loose much of the context and importance that was meant to be conveyed in the original work. Academic works are amalgamated into mediums like Wikipedia, and art, music and video are mashed up into remixed YouTube videos, again with the original context of the work being totally lost when it is viewed in such a tertiary form. In fact, in many cases it's quite possible that tertiary viewer doesn't even know anything about the original creation, or that there really was even an original creation that allowed for the viewing of this work.

I wish I had more of a conclusion to draw, or even more of a direction in which to ask questions, but alas the best I can do right now is bring this issue and promise to revisit the idea of context and what it means that I believe younger generations are beginning, in all aspects of living, to lose context.

Broadband Accessibility

Yesterday, it was reported from a study from the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration that nearly 1/3 of Americans do not have broadband internet access, with that group being split between people still using dialup or not having any internet access whatsoever.

In an effort to ensure all people have access to news, information and educational and political resources, we should make sure that over the next decade we expand that coverage and make sure that broadband internet access is affordable across the country. At that point we can begin to fully harness the energy, creativity and opinions of all of our citizens, not just those who can afford access currently.

Full article: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/02/almost-a-third-of-americans-still-dont-use-the-net.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

What separates 'lucky' and 'unlucky' people?

Have you ever wondered why some people tend to feel lucky all the time, while others do not? Well, just as many things seem to be, luck may be more of a product of our own mindset than any karmic or cosmic forces that might have been thought to be at work. 

As Richard Wiseman points out in his article the Daily Telegraph, people can actually improve their luck by making sure to take certain steps in their life, like taking chances and paying attention to new opportunities. 

Read the article here, today may be your lucky day: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3304496/Be-lucky-its-an-easy-skill-to-learn.html

I Just Signed Up For The Personal Democracy Forum - And So Should You!

The Personal Democracy Forum, probably the foremost conference on the intersection of technology and government/politics is being held this year June 3-4th in NYC. I went last year, and the sessions and workshops I saw literally blew my mind. Here is my brief recap from last year's conference, and I look forward to more thoughtful discussions about these issues this year.

Too often we, as a nation, get stuck on a narrow-focused track moving in a certain direction, especially in politics. We are fortunate to have people like Andrew Rasiej and Micah L. Sifry who put together conferences like the Personal Democracy Forum each year and remind us of the importance of discussing critical issues in technology, most importantly how technology can impact government and politics. It's an incredible opportunity to get so many bright minds together to talk about how we can leverage technology to make government work better and work more transparently.

Check out the site and hopefully I will see you there in June!

Where Does The Blame Go?

In terms of exploring the implications of technology on our way of life, it seems to me there is an interesting, yet rarely talked about, divergence between two broad groups of people who use technology. These two groups are people who understand and engage with technology on a somewhat natural level and those who do not.

I'd say one group tends to be younger and the blame when something goes wrong with technology is placed on the technology itself. In the other group, which I would suspect tends to be older, the blame is placed on the person trying to use technology for not understanding how to use the technology correctly.

Perhaps this state of mind of the younger generation is just more egocentric than the older generation that didn't grow up with the luxuries of technology that we have and have become accustomed to. Or, perhaps this frustration at technology is what fuels so many creative and determined people to found services like Napster, Google and Facebook - someone got frustrated that a particular service didn't exist or work 'like it should,' so they created it. Does this attitude translate into other parts of life, and if so, is it creating feelings of entitlement in a younger generation or feelings of motivation to improve our world? Just one more of the many questions I hope to be able to explore, and at some point answer. Thoughts?

"Dear Internet" - The Internet as a Distinct Community

The nascent ‘online community’ that has been given the opportunity to exist from the emergence of the internet is the topic of this week’s column. Although many may define a community as being a cohesive gathering of distinct parts, often unified around one particular theme, goal or characteristic, the ‘internet’ has itself become a discreet entity that can be interacted with, in effect it is more than just the sum of its parts.
    Before the internet, it was much more difficult to directly address a community without directly addressing specific people that make up that community. However, online social communication totally changed that idea.
    As the image shows, there is a lot of communication that takes place from one person to ‘the

internet.’ That is a snapshot of the trending topics on Twitter recently, where the most used keywords and phrases being tweeted are compiled into a list and displayed, with sometimes hundreds of updates containing that specific keyword happening every minute. This same type of communication can be seen on YouTube where users address videos directly to the ‘YouTube Community.’ These people often share extremely intimate details of their lives, and do so in a way such that they have a) no idea who might watch them b) when people might watch them and c) in what context people are watching them.
        Compare the type of things that people communicate on TV, or even radio versus the internet. TV communication is censored, is strictly controlled, the messages and images (even on reality shows) are incredibly carefully pieced together, only a very few people have control over who gets to transmit that information and it is only one-way. The internet is the total opposite. As long as we have net neutrality, there are no controls or filters on what people say. Online communication can be anonymous, cannot be controlled by anyone and there is an unprecendently low barrier to access for people who want to broadcast their ideas.
    This revolution in communication creates an environment where people push in two seemingly opposite directions. One direction is some of the most unintelligent, sometimes outright hateful and barbaric content one might imagine. There are entire websites like lamebook.com that are dedicated to displaying the incredibly bizarre and sometimes outright insane or mean things people say on Facebook, in addition to the many websites which are based solely on propagating hateful content, often towards specific people or groups of people.
    At the same time, there is a wealth of truly amazing community outreach, support and inspiration for people in various challenging life situations, charitable fundraising, government accountability and intelligent issues discussions that is literally mind-boggling as to their quantity and authenticity.
    A great representation of this dichotomy is something I saw on Facebook the other day. This was an update where someone had become a fan at the same time of both a page titled “Slapping the Sh*t Out Of Stupid People” and a page titled “Victims of the Earth Quake Disaster In Haiti.”

Neither of those comments are at the total extreme, as some comedic value is is most definitely part of the first one, but the juxtaposition was too good not to mention and does represent two distinct ways people use social media.
    I see the job of people in new media development such as myself, and anyone who might be reading this, to be brainstorming and promoting platforms that encourage the latter type of new communication - the kind that is supportive, caring, informative, personal and entirely authentic. People may be inherently dichotomous, and although there is no excuse to ever censor the ability for one to freely create content online, there is so much promise in pushing to develop ways to people to use their energy and ideas to contribute positively in civic life and to the lives of other people, and not just in their online community, but in that real-world community we all do still live in.