> Marvin:
> > Is he arguing that exposing people to the unfiltered 'Net is bad; or is he
> > arguing that it's a bad situation when an elite is allowed to filter the
> > 'Net for the masses to serve its own narrow ends? Which is Friedman
> > saying?
Nick:
> Closer to the former, I think. Here are the key paragraphs:
>
> "At its best, the Internet can educate more people faster than any media
> tool we've ever had. At its worst, it can make people dumber faster than any
> media tool we've ever had. The lie that 4,000 Jews were warned not to go
> into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 was spread entirely over the
> Internet and is now thoroughly believed in the Muslim world. Because the
> Internet has an aura of "technology" surrounding it, the uneducated believe
> information from it even more. They don't realize that the Internet, at its
> ugliest, is just an open sewer: an electronic conduit for untreated,
> unfiltered information.
>
> "Worse, just when you might have thought you were all alone with your
> extreme views, the Internet puts you together with a community of people
> from around the world who hate all the things and people you do. And you can
> scrap the BBC and just get your news from those Web sites that reinforce
> your own stereotypes."
>
> To me, that adds up to saying that most people are so gullible that they
> should rely on the BBC and other established mass media to be their
> information filters; the wired 5 percent cannot be trusted. That's fairly
> ridiculous when you consider who the 5 percent are -- the most educated and
> well-off Indonesians. And there's a sin of omission in that he treats the
> media as if it were faultless.
Ok, here's what I read: Friedman states a problem (which I think is real)
and offers the BBC simply for the sake of contrast. Not to argue that the
masses should only get their information from mass media conglomerates,
but to offer a contrast between an information source that attempts to
some degree to research and present facts and a diversity of opinions --
that is, "news" -- and an information source that makes no such attempt
whatsoever, choosing rather to present hate speech and libelous gossip in
the guise of news.
Furthermore he describes a basic human tendency: that most of us would
rather have our existing opinions reinforced than questioned. Since I find
this tendency in myself, in spite of myself, I don't believe he's offering it
as proof of the stupidity of the masses. I fight this tendency in myself
because I have a certain amount of education and because I have access to
a lot of information that allows me to make my own decisions. Friedman
offers the argument that a population that lacks that education and which
lacks that access cannot be expected to go out of its way to question its
deeply-held convictions about the intrinsically evil character of another
ethnic group.
I think history has proved that point correct on a sufficient number of
horrific occasions over the last several thousand years that it's pretty
much impossible to refute.
(OT aside: In _Earth_ DB talks about the problem of motivating
wired populations to seek well-balanced news coverage in addition to mere
reinforcement of already existing biases. IIRC the solution he invents
involves tying a person's voting rights to his or her news-reading
habits. Nobody's required to read any one particular source, but if you
want to vote you have to demonstrate that you seek out a variety of
perspectives.)
About the elite and wired 5 percent: of *course* they can't be trusted.
Maybe as individuals they can be, but *nobody's* elite 5 percent can be
trusted as a class, especially if they're the only ones with access to
wide sources of information about the nature of the world. Especially if
the masses don't have the means -- in the forms of education, access to
information, and stable democratic institutions -- to keep their elite 5
percent in check.
Finally, while I agree that Friedman could and should have spent more time
criticizing the world's media in general (another case of a tiny elite
controlling a huge percentage of the world's info), he does at least nod
in that direction by offering Fox News and ANN as flip sides of the same
mass-media coin: two highly biased news sources that no one should take
at face value.
The problem is that receiving news in a skeptical and questioning frame of
mind is a skill that must be cultivated and given a certain amount of
knowledge and data on which to operate. The problem is that in lots of
places the masses don't have those skills, don't have that knowledge, and
aren't encouraged to develop or seek them out. Whatever gets filtered
down from above is treated as fact in these circumstances, and in places
like Indonesia the "facts" presented to the masses highly biased and
unquestioned. Not as a function of the 'Net, but as a function of
society.
The 'Net in this context exacerbates a problem by lending an air of
authority to lies, in other words; but it is not the source of the problem
such that censoring or filtering it would provide a solution. Friedman
certainly doesn't argue for such a solution.
> If Friedman's call for "education, exchanges, diplomacy and human
> interaction" had been intended as medicine for the mass media, I'd stand
> with him. But he seems to be saying that the ignorant masses cannot yet be
> trusted to understand what they hear second-hand from the Internet. Or that
> the wired 5 percent -- who surely are reasonably well educated and informed
> people -- are ignorantly misusing the information they get from the
> Internet. Either way, it is elitist nonsense, especially since he fails to
> address the issue of mass media credibility.
Although he doesn't address the issue of mass media credibility in detail
(it's not his primary topic for what must be a short essay), he does
at least acknowledge the problem, as I mentioned above. He does not
present an either-or case of Internet vs. mass media. It's a case of
Internet *as* mass-media being misued and misunderstood.
Friedman's point is not that Indonesia's elite 5% are ignorant. It's that
a sufficiently dangerous number of them are willing to encourage the
masses' hatred of Jews and Americans, using the 'Net's ostensible
credibility as a bulwark against normal skepticism. It's that without
education and access themselves, the masses are largely helpless in the
face of such manipulation.
> > The apt comparison is Bible:Priests as Internet:Indonesia's 5%.
> > In the Middle Ages if a priest told you what he said came from the Bible,
> > you pretty much believed him because he was a figure of authority and
> > because only priests could read the Bible. Friedman presents a similar
> > situation in Indonesia: a privileged elite tells the masses that
> > something is true because it came from the Internet, and the masses
> > believe because among the uneducated the 'Net has the mystical authority
> > that adheres to admired but misunderstood high technology.
>
> This doesn't work for me at all. We're talking about the effects of the
> introduction of a new communications technology. I can see what you're
> saying, but I think you're comparing a situation that was relatively
> static -- an elitist priesthood that persisted for centuries -- when you
> should be comparing the dynamics of the arrival of printing into that
> situation. It's not at all clear that the wired 5 percent in Indonesia
> represents any sort of organized power base, unlike the priesthood. It's
> more like the literate 5 percent or so of 16th-century Europe -- merchants
> and others who had received an education from the Church, but were not
> necessarily of the Church.
The situation in Indonesia is just as static: a tiny elite controlling
what the people have a right to know. The problem Friedman points out is
that the Internet cannot redress that inequity if the masses of people
don't have access to it. What the Internet can do is exacerbate the
problem by lending authority to lies that certain elites choose to spread.
I'd argue that if the wired 5% are not tearing each other's throats out in
competition for power, then there is sufficient organization there for
them to act as a biased filter of knowlege for their masses. Even if they
are tearing each other's throats out, it's still quite possible -- and
apparently the case -- that there's sufficient consensus about a given
issue ("Islam good, Judaism evil") for that consensus to be presented to
the masses as incontrovertible truth.
> You used the word "sinister" in your reply. I don't see anything sinister
> in the article. It's just good old-fashioned media elitism with typical
> disdain for the masses.
Saying that, you sound as though all masses are created equal with respect
to the opportunity for knowledge, or as though Friedman think so. They're
not, and there's nothing in Friedman's article to suggest that Friedman
thinks they are. The problem Friedman presents is not that people cannot
be trusted to make up their own minds; it's that a certain class of people
aren't being given the opportunity to make up their own minds, and it's
that the existence of the Internet can't solve that problem if it only
belongs to a privileged few. I think he's also arguing that the Internet,
by itself, will never be a sufficient solution to the problems of
hatred that already exist. Again, the solutions he presents are not that
people should watch more TV; it's that people need to meet more and know
more about different peoples in personal, human to human contact.
Marvin Long
Austin, Texas
"Never flay a live Episiarch." -- Galactic Proverbs 7563:34(j)
