Clay Shirky

 1) Looking over the article as a whole, what are some of the positive developments due to the internet highlighted by Bill Thompson?

The internet is merely that cable that enables simultaneous exercise of the right to free speech, assembly, and the press. It is only essential for hundreds of millions of people's livelihood, social lives, health, civic involvement, education, and leisure. 

2) What are the negatives or dangers linked to the development of the internet?

The dark web, which is used to sell drugs and engage in other criminal behaviour, is made up of websites and online services that can only be accessed using specialist browsers and technologies that make it exceedingly difficult to figure out who is using them.

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

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

We could decide to live in a closed society or closed network, which appears to be safer. What might the internet do for you and your friends, and what could you make it do? That is the task I want to leave you with.

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

I think that everyone deserves and likes to have their privacy, but I also believe that there are times when the internet should be regulated to ensure that nothing negative or excessive occurs and that everything is in order. People dislike being observed or feeling as though their privacy is being violated.

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?

In the case of newspapers, professional behavior is guided both by the commercial im- perative and by an additional set of norms about what news- papers are, how they should be staffed and run, what constitutes good journalism, and so forth.

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

The practise of combining newspaper world news with horoscopes and pizza parlour advertisements has been discontinued. The broad amateurization of publishing and the shift from "Why publish this?" to "Why not?" are the futures that the internet offers.

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

The weekend following Lott's comments, weblogs with millions of visitors started to offer their own opinions. Some well-known conservatives who are avid readers contributed to the editorials, including Glenn Reynolds of the Instapundit blog. Reynolds stated, "But to say, as Lott did, that the country would be better off if Thurmond had won in 1948 is, well, it's proof that Lott shouldn't have been majority leader for the Republicans, to begin with. And it is merely the start. It's an attitude that's equally terrible and insane as hoping Gus Hall, a steadfast Communist candidate for president, had won.

4) What is ‘mass amateurisation’?

Mass amateurization refers to the capabilities that new forms of media have given to non-professionals and the ways in which those non-professionals have applied those capabilities to solve problems that compete with the solutions offered by larger, professional institutions

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’?

The identical thought can have an outweighing amplifying effect that outweighs the judgement from the smaller number of professional venues when it is published in dozens or hundreds of locations. 

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?

Real revolutions don't feature a smooth shift from point A to point B because social impacts lag behind technological ones by decades. Instead, they travel from A through a protracted period of upheaval before finally arriving at B. Old systems fail at that tumultuous time before new ones are established. Scribes and publishers coexisted in the late 1400s, but they no longer provided a necessary function. The scribes' perception of their basic nature, however, did not change despite the substitution of their primary duty.

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

Anyone could become a journalist if anyone can be a publisher. Additionally, if anyone can become a journalist, journalistic privilege suddenly becomes a gaping hole that society cannot afford to fill.

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?

In contrast to the printing press, which broke more things than it fixed and plunged Europe into a period of intellectual and political instability that lasted only until the 1600s, the comparison does not imply that things are about to get better.

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

The proliferation of digital cameras in general sparked the amateurization of the photography industry, but online photo hosting websites were where it truly took off.

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? 

I dont think taht theres such thing as an end of audience nessisarily i just think that the media has becom too accustomed to their audience and forgot that over generations people and generational audiences change so no i dont think that its the end of audiences its just the start of a new era