Clay Shirky: End of audience blog tasks

 Media Magazine reading

Media Magazine 55 has an overview of technology journalist Bill Thompson’s conference presentation on ‘What has the internet ever done for me?’ It’s an excellent summary of the internet’s brief history and its impact on society. Go to our Media Magazine archive, click on MM55 and scroll to page 13 to read the article ‘What has the internet ever done for me?’ Answer the following questions:


1) Looking over the article as a whole, what are some of the positive developments due to the internet highlighted by Bill Thompson?
 Spotify or Snapchat – but is also makes it next to impossible to stop spam, abuse or the trading of images of child abuse.

2) What are the negatives or dangers linked to the development of the internet?
 Extremists and radicals can use the network to try to influence people to join their cause, and fraud, scams, rip-offs and malicious software are everywhere.

3) What does ‘open technology’ refer to? Do you agree with the idea of ‘open technology’?

 I believe that if we want an open society based around principles of equality of opportunity, social justice and free expression, we need to build it on technologies which are themselves ‘open’, and that this is

the only way to encourage a diverse online culture that allows all voices to be heard.

 I disagree with the idea of open technology because there are many apps where open technology occurs and they are some children on this apps that an be exposed to explicit content at a young age. However it is good to have an app where you can share your opinions without any backlash.

4) Bill Thompson outlines some of the challenges and questions for the future of the internet. What are they?

Does it mean an internet built around the ‘end-to-end’ principle, where any connected computer can exchange data with any other computer, while the network itself is unaware of the ‘meaning’ of the bits exchanged?

• Does it mean computers that will run any program written for them, rather than requiring them to be vetted and approved by gateway companies?

• Does it mean free software that can be used, changed and redistributed by anyone without payment or permission? 

5) Where do you stand on the use and regulation of the internet? Should there be more control or more openness? Why?

I believe that when regulating things like the internet it is near impossible for people to stick to these regulations. As for control if a child under the age of 15 the internet should have a filter where it filters all kinds of swear words and all inappropriate things. 

Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody

Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody charts the way social media and connectivity is changing the world. Read Chapter 3 of his book, ‘Everyone is a media outlet’, and answer the following questions:

1) How does Shirky define a ‘profession’ and why does it apply to the traditional newspaper industry?

A profession exists to solve a hard problem, one that re-quires some sort of specialisation. Driving a race car requires special training-race car drivers are professionals. Driving an ordinary car, though, doesn't require the driver to belong to a particular profession, because it's easy enough that most adults can do it with a modicum of training.

2) What is the question facing the newspaper industry now the internet has created a “new ecosystem”?

The future presented by the internet is the mass amateurization of publishing and a switch from "Why publish this ?" to "Why not?"

The question that mass amateurization poses to traditional media is "What happens when the costs of reproduction and distribution go away? What happens when there's nothing unique about publishing any-

more, because users can do it for themselves?"

3) Why did Trent Lott’s speech in 2002 become news?

This would have been a classic story of negative press coverage altering a political career-except that the press didn't actually cover the story, at least not at first. Indeed, the press almost completely missed the story.

4) What is ‘mass amateurisation’?

Mass amateurisation is a result of the radical spread of expressive capabilities, and the most obvious precedent is the one that gave birth to the modern world: the spread of the printing press five centuries ago.

5) Shirky suggests that: “The same idea, published in dozens or hundreds of places, can have an amplifying effect that outweighs the verdict from the smaller number of professional outlets.” How can this be linked to the current media landscape and particularly ‘fake news’?
This is because smaller outlets might have to fake news to get some coverage within the newspaper industry. 



6) What does Shirky suggest about the social effects of technological change? Does this mean we are currently in the midst of the internet “revolution” or “chaos” Shirky mentions?




7) Shirky says that “anyone can be a publisher… [and] anyone can be a journalist”. What does this mean and why is it important?




8) What does Shirky suggest regarding the hundred years following the printing press revolution? Is there any evidence of this “intellectual and political chaos” in recent global events following the internet revolution?




9) Why is photography a good example of ‘mass amateurisation’?




10) What do you think of Shirky’s ideas on the ‘End of audience’? Is this era of ‘mass amateurisation’ a positive thing? Or are we in a period of “intellectual and political chaos” where things are more broken than fixed?