European Experts and Web 2.0: Saving the Rabble From Themselves

"Europe to save citizens from rubbish Web 2.0 media" ("The Register," December 21, 2007)

(Warning: mini-rant coming.)

"The European Union's Directorate of the Bleeding Obvious* has concluded, essentially, that the media is full of rubbish and that its audience is ill-equipped to assess the quality of the information that it is offered. Furthermore, the audience itself is now complicating matters by producing its own rubbish in multiple overlapping and intersecting formats."

Referring to the benighted peasants who now can publish their own works, "They don't always 'fully understand the context within which such material is written, seen or read, or the possible consequences of publishing something themselves.' And indeed quite often they don't, just as those selling 'my exclusive story' to the popular prints quite often don't understand the possible consequences. So your point is?"

" * Well OK, the Information Society & Media Directorate General, really." (ISMDG, in this post)

"The Register" article includes a link to a list of "contributors to a public consultation on media literacy run by the Commission in 2006." It's the usual suspects: old media, traditional organizations, and others who are scared spitless at the prospect at losing even more of their monopoly on information dissemination and analysis.

I don't always agree with "The Register," but this time I'm with them.

This ISMDG study is right in one way: "Web 2.0" is full of rubbish. So what? Any information media is full of rubbish: Just look at a grocery checkout magazine rack, if you don't believe me. (This is an American cultural reference - I'd love to know what other countries offer, as equivalents of the American tabloids.)

So, most people don't fully understand what they're doing? Okay, I'll agree with that. I certainly am not omniscient: I've done many things in my half-century on Earth, without thoroughly understanding the consequences, philosophies, and histories involved. (It's called "having a life" over here.) So far, trying something and learning from what happens next has worked for me. Of course I'm an American: maybe ISMDG assumes that Europeans aren't like that?

The ISMDG seems to think that people don't have a really well-developed set of critical and analytical skills. That's right! I'm a recovering English teacher, and I can tell you that the sample of humanity I dealt with didn't show the promise of being top-flight critical thinkers.

But they weren't stupid, either.

And, I don't think that the best approach to encourage critical thinking is to have a bunch of arrogant, old-school, wiser-than-thou 'experts' try conditioning the masses into thinking the 'right' way.

This ISMDG matter seems to be another 'we can learn so much from Europe' thing. In this case, what not to do. I know: that's jingoistic - and unfair. From hiring and college acceptance quotas to Santaphobia, America has its share of conceited, uppish, overbearing know-it-all do-gooders.