For the past week or more, I have been carrying around a newspaper cutting from the 29 September edition of The Guardian: a Media Guardian article by Professor Jeff Jarvis of the City University of New York (and the buzzmachine.com blog). I’ve finally got round to reading it properly and it’s fantastic stuff. In the article, Let’s junk the myths and celebrate what we’ve got, Jeff says we should accept the limitations of the internet and adopt a ‘glass half full’ attitude. His list of allegations probably makes familiar reading:
- There’s junk on the internet. True
- Most people watch junk. True
- Anyone can say anything on the internet. True
- There are inaccuracies on the internet. True
- Wikipedia has mistakes. True.
- We need a seal of approval for internet content. False.
- Bloggers aren’t journalists. True and false.
- People are rude on the internet. True.
- The internet has no ethics. True.
The full article is well worth reading. It makes it clear that so long as you are aware of the internet’s shortcomings, they are not a reason to abstain from it, rather they should be a challenge to help improve the quality and accuracy of what’s out there. It is something that will no doubt appeal to some of the participants at Friday’s Be2camp Web 2.0 event in London.
