In Rheingold’s chapters 2 and 3 we were presented
with the idea of Crap Detention and Participation Power while being online. I
liked how Rheingold stated in the beginning of the Crap Detection chapter the
following: “don’t refuse to believe; refuse to start out believing.” Here, he
is referring to the information we find online. I think that what he says is very
important to remember because sometimes we can easily fall into thinking that
everything we find online in not true. But that is not always the case. There
is countless information online that we should never believe but there is also
a ton of information online that can be useful and more importantly, true. As
Rheingold mentions, nowadays it is our job to figure out what is true and what
is not true from the information that we find online. We won’t know how to do
this right away though, but with practice, Rheingold says that we will be able
to tune our crap detectors.
I agree with Rheingold where he shared from a
source that stated that “a search engine is not a human, it is a program that
matches the words you give to pages on the web.” I don’t only agree with this
but I find helpful how that source went on to say “use the words that are most
likely to appear on the page. For example, instead of saying [my head hurts],
say [headache], because that’s the term a medical page will use.” It is more
likely that by searching with more direct words what you find will lead you to
web pages where the information will be trustworthy rather than fake or
irrelevant information. This is especially helpful to know since people are
searching for all kinds of things, from what movies are playing at the theaters
to finding more information about a disease they were just diagnosed with.
Similar to what Rheingold talked about in his
chapter 2, Rosenberg and Postman talked about crap detection in their articles. I
particularly found helpful how Rosenberg mentioned on the “Is the content original and unique” section
that is good to copy and paste the information into other search engines to see
if the information we are finding is unique and original. I feel like this can
be helpful so that you can check how valid the information you are finding is
and also to expand your research sources. From Postman’s article I liked when
he said that “Each
person's crap-detector is embedded in their value system; if you want to teach
the art of crap-detecting, you must help students become aware of their values.”
I can agree with this since very much of what we believe to be true from what
we find online is connected to our values. Our reactions towards what we find
online are also, in a way, connected to our values. So, I think that it was
important for Postman to point out this idea.
In chapter
3, Participation Power, Rheingold talked about how people online are not only
there as viewers or consumers but also as participators. I was stunned by some
of the statistics Rheingold shared in this chapter. For instance, he shared
that “thirty-five hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Flickr
reported its five-billionth photo uploaded in 2010.” I think is amazing how this
statistics show that as a society we have evolved so rapidly within the online
community.
I
particularly liked when Rheingold talked about bloggers and how by starting
with commenting work by people whose publications you admire is a good way of
interacting with them. Sometimes, I feel like I am not too sure as to how to
start sharing more online or interacting with those who seem to be skilled in
sharing all kinds of information online so reading this was interesting to me. Maybe
I’ll try more of that and see what happens in the future.
Towards the
end of his Participation Power chapter he talked about Footprints and Profiles
and he shared that boyd (no capitals in her name) said how she feels embarrassed
about work she has not only posted foolishly but also embarrassed about some
scholarly articles she’s written and published. This makes me see that in a way
maybe many have felt like what they are ready to post publicly or publish is
such an amazing work but later on they may feel the complete opposite about it
and to an extend that’s okay because if we don’t post anything then when will
we post. If we don’t start somewhere, we’ll never start.
See you all tomorrow,
-Maria
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