October 27th, 2009 Beware: Information age elitist
InfoCamp 2009. It is the last breakout session of the two-day, knowledge-share event. Quentin has proposed a discussion on the present status and future prospects of user-created content. He opens the session with showing his audience a couple of popular YouTube videos Slap Chop and Benny Lava, a bollywood music video whose native syllables have been “translated” to some non-sensical English equivalent with hilarious results.
The group’s conversation begins with some observations about why internet creatives post their work online. The page view stats and viewer feedback gives the user a sense of how popular this particular clip is along with the opinions of those who care enough to leave a comment. There is general agreement that it is gratifying for the producer to know the content has received massive acceptance from the recorded volume of public consumption. It is less obvious what value this provides and what purpose these venues serve. Would people still want to post their content if the number of page views and ability to give feedback were not available to the user?
And so the discussion proceeds along some fairly typical lines of reasoning with a comment thrown in about how the process makes sharing, viewing and commenting a transparent, democratic process. More comments are made about the underlying motives of the content producers.
“It’s true. Someone did alot of work to create this. Didn’t they have anything else better to do with their time?”
Apparently, I struck a chord with someone. Another participant then claimed the statement was elitist. Dumbstruck I was. Now the conversation took a turn toward…democracy? It’s fair game, it’s a level playing field, entry level is so low anyone can produce and post their stuff, it’s a stimulant for people to do great things. The flip side is that it’s just as likely to be used for producing crap. And again, the old television argument surfaced: If you don’t like it turn it off, click away.
If being elitist suggests that you purposely make value judgements about what content you choose to absorb, and this platform is based on the freedom to make those judgements, then what’s the problem? The user, after spending five minutes watching it might ask: Don’t I have anything better to do? Now that’s a democratic system!
When using the most common work-related apps, we’re accustomed to having fields similar to: always notify me when, or send to blocked sender’s list, etc. In this case, no one would be elitist for simply managing their preferences. When you are on sites like YouTube the management of preferences is completely up to the user’s click impulse. In the online version of democracy the caveat is we have to be willing to click through alot of dreck to find the content that serves us beyond mere entertainment.
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