OSP: Clay Shirky - End of audience

 1) Looking over the article as a whole, what are some of the positive developments due to the internet highlighted by Bill Thompson?Have access to people all around the world.

Email and exchange files with people at university.

Provides us with mass amounts of information.
2) What are the negatives or dangers linked to the development of the internet?

Bullying and abuse takes place.

Lots of frauds, scams everywhere

Pornography.

3) What does ‘open technology’ refer to? Do you agree with the idea of ‘open technology’?

If we want a free society with freedom of speech and equal opportunity that technology should be open. Open technology refers to how anyone can express their opinions online without having to go through an entire process of regulation.

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

The digital information is hard to control in an open world because this arrives in a more manipulative form. You can select which parts you want to watch aka selective consumption.

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

I think everyone has the right to their own opinion and now that the internet is more open people are way more expressible than they need to be.

Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody

Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody charts the way social media and connectivity is changing the world. Read Chapter 3 of his book, ‘Everyone is a media outlet’, and answer the following questions:

1) How does Shirky define a ‘profession’ and why does it apply to the traditional newspaper industry?

A profession is something that exists to solve a problem. Mostly specialized.

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

There is a less focus on quality of news due to mass amateurisation.

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

Lott praised Thurmond's presidential campaign 50 years later.

4) What is ‘mass amateurisation’?

The growth in self published content online.

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’?

This suggestion links to the concept of fake news because it implies that if one news story is consistently repeated throughout the media, then it is more likely to be repeated. 

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?

We are the middle of a internet revolution because the internet enables massive change.

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

Audiences can also turn into producers rather just keep on consuming.

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?

Being a scribe was a respectable job because you needed a great deal of literacy in order to do so

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

Anyone with a phone can now take high quality photos and edit them and you don't need to be an experienced photographer.