Nutrition seems to be in fashion these days. We go out of our way to cut on calories, cholesterol points and glycemic load. We try to eat the right nutrients and avoid the bad stuff. Still, food is not all we ingest. We also gorge on information: facts, news, updates, commentary, recommendations and so on. Should we be giving our informaiton diet the same amount of consideration?
Not unlike food, there’s a lot of information around these days, but quality varies. Some information is accurate, timely and objective, but a lot is not that great. Bias, misinformation, sensationalism, staleness, superficiality, over-processing and gravitation towards low common denominators are not uncommon. Tabloids and adverts may be the most extreme examples of pseudo-information or junk-information, but other, more “respectable” sources of factual data are also susceptible to these issues. News pieces, magazine articles, TV documentaries and nonfiction books are now pressured by Hollywoodian dogma to be more entertaining and less informative in hope of appealing to wider audiences. Thus the Darfur genocide turns out to be less news-worthy than the court cases of Michael Jackson and O.J. Simpson, How-To-Become-a-Millionaire-Easy books are more likely to find a publisher than a book about Alzheimer and documentaries that bluntly show one-sided views of the world are no longer frowned upon.
In the midst of this gradual decline one medium stands out as different and more resilient – the Internet. In my opinion it’s shaping up to be the stronghold of good, solid info. Here’s why:
- Less about revenue and shareholders – Publishing on the Internet is (comparatively) cheap. Opening and running a personal blog or micro-blog costs close to nothing. Maintaining a popular site is much less expensive than running a newspaper or a TV station. Many sites, blogs, wikis, forums, social networks and discussion groups are not for profit. Thus the corporate pressure to compromise on quality in hope of improving the bottom line is much less there. True, a race for rating exists also in the Internet, but surprisingly (or not) the masses flock to good information, even when it’s comprehensive, complex and bluntly non-entertaining. For example Wikipedia is consistently ranked as one of the top 10 most-visited sites in the Web.
- Choice – the Internet rejects walled-gardens. You may read an article in site A, decide it’s not good enough and so move on to site B, perhaps never to return. Ultimately if more users do the same site A will see its traffic dwindling. Unlike old media which limits you to the offering of information included in a TV package, newspaper or book, the Internet puts a universe of content at your fingertips. Competition for your attention is practically limitless, which motivates information providers to do better.
- Democratic and Heterogeneous – unlike old media, in which a select few get to decide what to publish/broadcast and how, in the Internet anyone, professional or amateur, mainstream or fringe, can be heard. If you have a camcorder and a youTube account you can open your own TV channel. Blogs, personal sites and microblogs are just some of the ways you can post ideas, information and images online. Anyone can contribute to and edit Wikipedia articles. Social networks, forums, mailing lists and Q&A sites help people discuss topics and find information. Call it democratization of knowledge, social media or whatever, it’s there and it’s highly popular. This immense influx of voices does not guarantee quality of course, but when aggregated properly it can be a very powerful agent of good info. Wikipedia (yeah, I like this example a lot) melts its many contributions into quality articles. News aggregators such as Google News and TechMeme provide news coverage based on a multitude of articles, perspectives and reactions around each topic. Customer review sites collect the opinions of users and synthesize them into recommendations and scores. There are many other examples that show how a multitude of voices can create a balanced, well-informed view of things.
- Current - whether it is news, weather, prices, product reviews, classified ads or any other type of information, you’ll always find the latest and most up-to-date info on the Internet. It is constantly updating. A news web page may change every few minutes as new stories break. A Wikipedia article may get updated days or even hours after new pertinent data is published. A blogger may post an article on the spot in response to an event. Microblogging services like Tweeter report of breaking news such plane crashes and terrorist attacks in real-time and ahead of the news media as users post text and pictures from their mobile phones.
- Measured and Ranked – there are many information scoring and ranking systems in the Internet. Readers can often rate the usefulness/quality of information items and see what others thought. Blogs get ranked by their “authority”, which is the number of blogs that link to them. Search engines rank web pages based on different criteria including link-backs and content. Social bookmarking services such as Digg and Delicious allow users to collectively highlight good content. These mechanisms, largely non-existent in old media, mean that Internet content is continuously monitored and scored. The end result is that good, useful things bubble to the top while junk-info gets left in bottomless pits of Internet oblivion.
- Specific - the Internet is infinitely large. Mainstream topics get a lot of coverage of course, but there’s room also for every specialized niches If you’re looking to renovate a 1967 Ford Mustang you can be sure there are forums, blogs and sites full of good, free, relevant information. Wondering which herbs would grow best your garden this time of year? No problem. The printer you bought five years ago is giving you trouble – someone probably had the same issue and posted a solution. And if you haven’t found what you’re looking for – start a conversation or a whole forum dedictaed to it, and people will join the discussion bringing info.
- Innovative - Internet developers are constantly dreaming up new ways to collect, process and present information. This is the fuel on which many Internet projects run. Thus your info-gathering expreince can be much enhanced on the Internet. Reading at a map teaches you a lot, but a map that combines street views and pictures posted by users is even more informative. An article about investment options is great, but seeing actual specific investor portfolios at work is even better.
So there’s nothing inherently “good” about the information posted on the Internet. Clearly much is copied from old media and a lot is pretty lousy. It’s just that the Internet gives you much more. More information, more choice, richer applications, better quality-control, and less incentive to produce junk. You can almost always find good, up-to-date and reliable information on it. Sooner or later people will be as wary of they put in your mind as they are with what they put in their body, which may spell more bad news for incumbent information industry. Down the road we may see some propagation back from the Internet into old media. There are many untapped options for symbiosis, for example displaying user-generated quality/accuracy ratings next to TV adverts and other information items. Until then we’ll just need to watch what we consume more carefully or even go on an full-out information diet .
(images: FreeDigitalPhotos.net)
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Itamar Gilad is an Internet technologist and author. He is currently working on his first book "Internet Inside Out".
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