Internet and Open Source Taking Journalism by Storm…Well Duh.
Oh, how obvious it seems that this weeks post/ blog assignment brings to mind yet another crazy analogy. That of talking parrots. Let me back-up first to set the stage for the birds. We The Media by Dan Gillmor, mimics yet again the transformation of mass media, in particular journalism, in today’s society. The transformation expressed as tied to internet usage and the open source movement (Okay, stage is set, the curtain is being drawn). Gillmor justifies that culture is moving away from purely subscription to sources of journalism and adopting themselves as inscribers public democratizers of truth seeking. He presents in mild detail the evolution and changing image and identity that journalism has carried with it throughout history. He asserts, in common with many of the other pieces that I have commented on, September 11, 2001 as the tipping point for citizen media activism (2006,p.18). Think now of the talking parrots, historically these birds were thought of as possessing incredible intelligence. As science and inquiry revealed, these birds don’t necessarily fully understand the breadth of what they are “saying”. Like society for some time, people credited the news as being intelligent and wise. People repeated and valued the news at is was communicated to them;
”Parrots are taught to speak without understanding the words. The method is to place a mirror between the parrot and the trainer. The trainer, hidden by the mirror, utters the words, and the parrot, seeing his own reflection in the mirror, fancies another parrot is speaking, and imitates all that is said by the trainer behind the mirror.” (http://askville.amazon.com/parrots-speak-mimic/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=7222240)
Do we se the similarities between the historical argument of the viewer of TV news here? Parrots actually talk by blowing air across the changing shape and size of their tracheas, attempting to sound like their trainers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrot#Sound_imitation_and_speech). Okay,okay I am not inferring here that people are as unintelligent as parrots. We are currently demonstrating that we are so far the opposite. Gillmor portrays the power of “Internet “Broadcasting”" as solidifying the pinnacle of consumer intelligence and productivity. Among numerous examples he provides various technologies such as weblogs, Wikis, short message services, RSS, and more, as simplifying the doability of consuming and producing journalism. He confirms that Big Media is being horizontalized to merge with the gift economy (2006, p.29) by societies quest to find truth in the media. Finally, we are the media and we are questioning more and more everything and everyone.
