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2 SurfingThroughNoise: Riding The Online Knowledge Wave




Chapter One
What Is This World Wide Web?




Looking Back, It Seems Like the Stone Age
   It's hard to believe that not so long ago in the late 1960s and early
1970s us baby boomers consumed all of our news from only three major
television networks and our local newspapers. Our primary communica-
tion device was a black rotary telephone, and many of us had party lines
that we shared with other folks in the neighborhood. If you happened to
share a line with a loquacious neighbor, you were out of luck until his or
her long conversation ended. One of my friends grew up in a relatively
poor neighborhood where the telephone booth on the corner served as the
primary communication device for a number of families on the street where
he lived. "Hey, Mister or Misses so and so," a fellow neighbor, who hap-
pened to be within close proximity to the booth, would shout from across
the street, "there's a telephone call for ya!"
   For entertainment, television held the main stage, with non-violent, non-
sexually oriented shows such as "My Three Sons," "Leave It to Beaver,"
"Father Knows Best," "Captain Kangaroo," "The Ed Sullivan Show" and
"Mitch Miller" attracting our eyeballs and undivided attention. There
wasn't a whole lot of viewing choice, but shows like these were enough to
keep us entertained. We also had full-color comic books for our fantasy
reading pleasure. And game playing was the real stuff held outdoors in the
fresh air and sunshine (or lack thereof - I grew up in Buffalo, NY) of any
season.
                                            What Is This World Wide Web? 3




   When we conducted research for homework, we went to the dictio-
nary, and, if we were from a reasonably well-off family, we may have had
a lovely set of encyclopedias to draw knowledge from. In those days, a
door-to-door encyclopedia salesman could make a decent living. At my
house, we had a half-set of Funk & Wagnel's - up through the letter J - that
my mother purchased piecemeal at a discounted price from the local gro-
cery store. I remember these 12 or so volumes actually serving my sib-
lings and I pretty well in times of knowledge needs, despite being short
sighted in its entirety.
   Our homework assignments, of course, were typically composed with
pen or pencil on paper. As we learned how to type, assignments were
composed on manual typewriters with a special gray eraser nearby. And
those who happened to have an electric typewriter with a backspace eraser
at home were considered on the cutting edge of high technology.
   Seems like the sixties and seventies were the "Stone Age." Yes, to state
the obvious, things have changed dramatically since those relatively un-
complicated days. For a contrast beyond anything we could have imag-
ined, just take a look at the "connected" teenager of today who has grown
up with the Internet.
   Somewhere between e-mail and BitTorrent, we all had to leave our
text-based world and enter the new world of information and communica-
tions technology (ICT). As a new generation enters chat rooms, text mes-
sages each other, talks away on cell phones, plays in virtual environments,
and posts their souls on social networking sites, us older text-oriented
adults have had to learn how to deal with a new information and commu-
nications order (or disorder, depending on where you sit and think) unlike
anything we have ever seen before. And with this change has come some
interesting reactions that deserve our attention.

Fearing the Different
   Henry Jenkins, author, professor and founder and director of MIT's
Comparative Media Studies Program, explains how many parents, for in-
stance, are frightened by the implications of their children growing up in
a world that is very different from the world they grew up in. Parents who
were raised during a time in which MySpace did not exist often react
instinctively or emotionally, rather than intelligently, to any social net-
working issues and challenges. As Jenkins notes, dealing with MySpace
does not allow parents to fall back on those tried and true responses that
originated from child-raising theories and concepts of the past.
   "It is one of a dozen things you have to formulate a response to every
4 SurfingThroughNoise: Riding The Online Knowledge Wave




day, and you are stressed out about it," Jenkins says. "So, you see some
sensationalistic report on a cable news channel that pumps up the fear that
kids are at risk when they go on MySpace. It hits at a very visceral level,
and you are afraid that you can't adequately protect your child. So you put
pressure on the schools and political leaders to stop it."
   Jenkins was referring to the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), a
measure that, to the horror of Internet geeks everywhere, the House of
Representatives passed in 2006. Fortunately, it failed in the Senate. How-
ever, to our dismay again, another DOPA bill was introduced to the House
in early 2007. DOPA requires schools and libraries to block access to a
lots of wonderful, interactive web content, including "websites that let
users create web pages or profiles or offer communication with other us-
ers via forums, chat rooms, e-mail or instant messaging."
   In effect, DOPA would completely block students from going to any
social networking websites, such as wikis and blogs, as well as prevent
them from using e-mail and instant messaging on any of their school's
Internet-connected computers. Anything on the web that is interactive
would not be accessible. Jenkins calls this kind of legislation "totally out
of wack" and "ill conceived." Why? Because DOPA is an irrational re-
sponse to today's digital age. Rather than supporting our teachers and
librarians in a quest to assist young people with applying rational, safe
and practical ways for using ICT, we are saying let's close and lock the
library doors, Jenkins notes.

The Noise Factor
   DOPA is only one example of how "noise" surrounds the worldwide
adoption of innovative and new ICT. By noise, I mean "incomprehensi-
bility resulting from irrelevant information or meaningless facts or re-
marks," as defined by WordNet Search, an online lexical database of En-
glish, developed under the direction of George A. Miller, distinguished
Princeton University professor emeritus. I also refer to the 2e definition
of noise from Merrian-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition: "Ir-
relevant or meaningless data or output occurring along with desired infor-
mation."
   The DOPA reaction is full of "incomprehensibility" on the part of its
supporters who do not understand that ICT is here to stay; that our chil-
dren will need to acquire the fullest understanding and keenest abilities
when using ICT throughout their lives in order to compete in a global
economy; that although there is a negative side to the overabundance of
"irrelevant and meaningless" (and pornographic) web content out there
                                             What Is This World Wide Web? 5




today (see YouTube as a prime example of an overabundance of crap),
there is also plenty to be desired. And it is all accessible from the tip of
our fingertips pressing on buttons that connect us to the web and enable us
to trade and distribute valid information for the benefit of all web citizens.

Surfing Through Noise
   Yet, many web surfers do not know how to navigate through all the
noise in order to find authoritative and trustworthy information.
   Learning how to find and analyze the kind of information that can help
us solve problems and challenges, answer our deepest questions, and per-
haps bring about positive change in our culture and politics is what every
web-savvy and responsible citizen needs to pursue more ardently than
ever before.
   As this ocean we call the web continues to expand ferociously into
something we cannot predict, two elements of the web are certain: On the
pessimistic side of life, there's a strong cross current that floats garbage,
misinformation, and lies. And, on the optimistic side of life, there's an-
other strong cross current containing gifts of knowledge, useful informa-
tion, and the possibility for valuable interactive connectedness. Being able
to find and consistently surf the latter cross current and stay balanced ­
and thus avoid the noise ­ is a skill-set that requires hard and patient
work, good critical thinking and, to use a popular Beatles' phrase, "a little
help from my friends."

Information Literacy
   In the halls of academia, and especially in the halls of college and uni-
versity libraries, "information literacy" is the term most often used to de-
fine our ability to find and collect authoritative and trustworthy informa-
tion and then effectively share it with others. How do we become skilled
at finding, evaluating and using information, both discovered and pub-
lished ourselves on the Internet, in positive ways? As lifelong citizens of
the Information Age, the answer to this question seems to grow in com-
plexity every day. One of the reasons for the complexity is due to the two
aforementioned cross currents playing out in numerous new and varied
forms of information dissemination that change as quickly as they are
born. We look at, and/or participate in, blogs, wikis, video logs, podcasts,
listservs, discussion forums, social networks, social bookmarks,
PowerPoints, webinars, instant messaging, text messaging, RSS feeds,
citizen journalism, scholarly journals and abstracts, search engine results,
websites with reader-recommended news, new and rapidly growing forms
6 SurfingThroughNoise: Riding The Online Knowledge Wave




of ubiquitous computing and a host of other portals to information and
online communication tools. That set of encyclopedias that we learned
how to trust not so long ago has crumbled into dust.
    Peter Morville, an information architecture consultant for companies
such as AT&T, IBM, Microsoft and Yahoo, and author of a really good
book titled "Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Be-
come," says we are going through a transition period, and it is anyone's
best guess as to how long this transition will last.
    "I think back when I was a kid and I had my single-volume encyclope-
dia," Morville explains. "It was a wonderful resource, and it had a really
nice feeling that if you had any question you could just look it up in your
book. To some degree the whole traditional K-12 education system was
oriented that way, with this notion of one authority and one history. I went
through my education system with this idea that I was learning the one
truth. Now many of us are in this period of transition where we are ex-
posed to many different perspectives, many truths and many resources, so
much so that it can feel overwhelming."
    So, what can we do about it? The straight-to-the-point and simple an-
swer is to become information literate; in other words ­ as defined by the
Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) ­ learn how to
"recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate,
evaluate, and use effectively the needed information."
    A more complex answer is that, in addition to becoming information
literate, we need to become visually literate, new-media (or Web 2.0) lit-
erate, and information fluent - or to put everything under one banner, we
can simply call it 21st Century literacy. Let's take a deeper look at all of
these, beginning with information literacy as it relates to, in partciular,
search engine technologies and, more specifically, Google.

Our Over Reliance On Google?
   A key word in the ACRL definition of information literacy is "evalu-
ate." To begin with, any good educator ­ including librarians who typi-
cally do not get the recognition they deserve for being educators ­ will
explain that building a person's ability to evaluate information entails
addressing what it means to be a critical thinker. Applying this notion to
the way in which we customarily search for information over the Internet
brings us to the number-one search engine in the world, Google.
   A good question to start with is have we become overly reliant on
Google? Many academic librarians and others who analyze and report on
search engine technology say that using Google as a primary source of
                                              What Is This World Wide Web? 7




information has major drawbacks and negative consequences. In short,
the overuse of Google can decrease one's ability to conduct valid, full-
bodied and meaningful research.
   Seth Maislin, an information architect and president of the American
Society of Indexers, explains that, ironically, "the flaw lies in Google's
strength: social algorithms." Maislin's point is that Google's page-rank-
ing system is influenced by networks of links. It basically rewards those
websites that have the largest number of other websites that link to them,
regardless of the quality of content. Maislin, for instance, explains how, at
one time, the Google search results for the word "Jew" typically resulted
with the number one listing being a website known as JewWatch.com,
which happened to be an offensive and inflammatory collection of
antisemitic content. In his blog, at http://maislin.blogspot.com/, Maislin
elaborates:

    This happened because a large number of supporters of this site tended
    to build links to it; then, those who were outraged or amused also
    linked to it within their protestations. In the end, the social algorithms
    at Google recognized how popular (i.e., "linked to") this site was, and
    in response rated it very highly - in fact, rated it first - compared to all
    other websites with the word "Jew" in the title. Eventually, those who
    were enraged by this content fought back by asking as many people as
    possible to link somewhere else, specifically the Wikipedia definition
    of Jew. Over time, more people linked to Wikipedia than to JewWatch,
    and so the latter dropped into second place at Google. This process of
    building networks of links in order to influence Google's social algo-
    rithm is called "Google bombing." In other words, when the people
    who hated the site acted together in a large group, Google's social
    algorithms responded. 1

   Maislin also believes that Google's advertising-revenue business model
affects its search results in interesting ways. For example, if the best, most
authoritative and trustworthy search results came up on the first page,
most people would not navigate any further through Google's results and
hence not view as many Google advertisements. Basically, if the first-
page results are less than ideal, users would be more likely to click on the
next page and view more advertisements. "When you go to Google, what
inspires you to keep clicking on the next page of results?" Maislin asks
rhetorically. "Maximizing ad revenue is probably important to Google. If
they put too many ads on the first page of their search results, people
8 SurfingThroughNoise: Riding The Online Knowledge Wave




would leave. So what you are looking for is not perfection (in first-page
search results); what you are looking for is something close to perfection"
(so people will click through to the next page).

The Easy Way Out
   "Anyone conducting research who only goes to Google is not really
thinking critically," adds Steven Bell, associate university librarian for
research and instructional services for the Temple University Libraries.
"They are just doing the most easiest and convenient thing that comes
first in their mind. I don't mind them (higher education students) using
any Internet search engine if they also plan out a strategy that involves
two or three other databases within their discipline, or through something
that is a general database that would give them multiple sources of infor-
mation so they could assess and evaluate what they're finding through a
form of triangulation."

Using Library Databases
    Nonetheless, Bell adds that navigating through most academic library
databases, for instance, is often a cumbersome and frustrating experience.
Plus, when it comes to conducting research online in our rapidly changing
digital world, student behaviors are changing dramatically. Today, many
students typically give up the possibility of more fruitful research results
if information isn't found instantaneously through one, simple Google-
like search box.
    Bell explains that part of his job is to change students' opinions about
the difficulties and challenges often associated with online library research
tools. "Currently, when they first look at online library research tools, the
first thing that comes to their minds is `I don't need these. They are too
complicated.' And we even see this in our own profession now, with li-
brarians saying `Well, library databases are too confusing. Students don't
understand them," Bell explains. "And I agree, but sometimes you need to
sit down and learn something. Physics is complicated, too, but if you want
to be an engineer you are going to have to take the necessary time to learn
about physics. That's all part of being a critical thinker." Bell adds that as
faculty build more information literacy-oriented modules and exercises,
by discipline, into their classroom instruction and homework assignments,
"critical thinking will start to happen more naturally rather than being a
forced behavior that we push on students."
                                            What Is This World Wide Web? 9




Visual Literacy
   Critical thinking also applies to the visual aspects of information lit-
eracy, especially since children are growing up with more visual stimula-
tion from television shows and electronic learning and gaming environ-
ments than ever before. Unlike us baby boomers, they are not text-centric,
but instead image-centric in their consumption of information.
   Susan Metros, a professor in the Department of Design at Ohio Uni-
versity, explains how "misrepresenting something visually or not under-
standing the power of visual images in anything you do can almost be life
threatening now." For example, Metros points to the infamous set of Danish
caricatures depicting the Prophet Muhammad that set off worldwide pro-
tests and condemnations resulting in tragic violence and death. Indeed,
the power of images can have enormous implications.
   Being visually literate today means, in part, that we have an under-
standing of how images -both moving and still and ultimately published
online - are created and manipulated. "We tend to think, if we see it, we
believe it," says Metros. "But your thirteen-year-old can manipulate im-
ages using Photoshop (sophisticated image-manipulation software made
by Adobe). And news organizations and big media frequently crop im-
ages to give us different perspectives. I have a wonderful image of George
Bush meeting with the troops in Germany. It was on the front page of USA
Today," she adds, sardonically. "It was so obviously Photoshoped. Some-
one looked at the original photo and said, `Oh, we need an African Ameri-
can, an Asian and a woman (added to the troops in the background).' You
could see the feathering effect around the images, but there was nothing
noted near the image that said it was a (fabricated) collage."

New Media and Our Participatory Culture
   In addition to being information literate and visually literate, one needs
to understand what's happening in the so-called worlds of new media and
the participatory web. New media takes into account all of the most recent
information and communications technologies that are driving news and
entertainment to our computers and mobile devices. The participatory web,
which is part of today's new media environment, is also referred to as
"user-generated content," "we media," "social media," the "democratized
web" and a variety of other names.
   According to Carleton College Cinema and Media Studies Department
Professor John Schoot, who teaches an innovative six-credit course titled
"Participatory Media," the participatory web is where anyone can gather,
produce and publish their knowledge about anything to the world through
10 SurfingThroughNoise: Riding The Online Knowledge Wave




a wide variety of new media, such as weblogs, photo blogs, podcasts and
videoblogs. It is the ability to find, collect, archive, share and remix au-
dio, video and images online in a new Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture.
   What are the new realities of the participatory web? There are two
schools of thought. One is that the participatory web is like the Tower of
Babel and only adds to an already overabundance of irrelevant, hard-to-
comprehend information published online. The other is that the participa-
tory web has become the home for new individual voices and like-minded
communities of interest that are catalyzing meaningful cultural and politi-
cal change, with the same, or greater, level of credibility and importance
as professional mass media.
   Some of the literature about these two realities have strong voices. For
instance, Jaron Lanier, computer scientist and Discover Magazine colum-
nist, referred to the participatory web, ala wikis and other forms of social
networking, as a new kind of social collectivism driven by a hive mind
that is dangerous, stupid, boring, and, at times, capable of lowering the
overall expectations we hold for individual human intellects. 2
   Best-selling author Steven Johnson added his take on Lanier's point of
view, when he wrote that:

    A swarm of connected human beings is a fantastic resource for track-
    ing down software bugs or discovering obscure gems on the web. But
    if you want to come up with a good idea, or a sophisticated argument,
    or a work of art, you are still better off going solo. 3

Freedom Online: Great Promise or Not?
   Yale Law Professor Yochai Benkler wrote a 515-page book about the
participatory web (and much more) titled "The Wealth of Networks: How
Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom." In a nutshell,
Benkler asserts that we are in the midst of a new information age that has
given us the freedom to actively participate in a networked information
economy, i.e. the participatory web, that is not motivated by financial
profit or managed by an industrial complex.

    This new freedom holds great practical promise: as a dimension of
    individual freedom; as a platform for better democratic participation;
    as a medium to foster a more critical and self-reflective culture; and,
    in an increasingly information-dependent global economy, as a mecha-
    nism to achieve improvements in human development everywhere. 4
                                            What Is This World Wide Web? 11




   Nicholas Carr, former executive editor of the Harvard Business Re-
view and author of a blog called "Rough Type," takes issue with Benkler's
point of view. "I think Benkler is absolutely right," he says. "Social pro-
duction, voluntary labor and cooperation over the Internet is a very real
phenomenon. Where I take issue with him is in his belief that this free
social production exists outside of the market economy, that it is indepen-
dent of managerial structures and independent of what he calls the pricing
system. In fact I think that we are seeing social production ­ rather than
being separate from the market system ­ is very much being incorporated
into the market system, because companies are realizing that they can
draw on this content that is being produced for free."
   Carr further elaborates, saying that Benkler's wealth of networks will
ultimately become similar to how mass media has always worked. "The
people who are able to produce the most valuable and most popular con-
tent are going to end up getting paid. Benkler's mistake is in trying to
draw too clear a distinction between social production and market pro-
duction. I think they are going to merge together into some kind of blend.
His idea that there is some kind of purity in social production is not going
to hold up."

The New Knowledge Culture and the Everyman
   David Weinberger, co-author of the international bestseller "The
Cluetrain Manifesto," author of JOHO the Blog, and fellow at Harvard's
Berkman Center, provides another optimistic point of view regarding the
participatory web. He cites Wikipedia, for instance, as proof of concept in
how a shift in our knowledge culture continues to develop rapidly and in
positive directions since the mid 1990s when Netscape ignited the Internet
boom.
   "Wikipedia is proof that a resource as good as most encyclopedias, and
in some cases better than most encyclopedias, can emerge from a decen-
tralized group of people whose expertise has no external validation; it is
not visible. That is a liberating idea. It can be done. Presumably we can
have some hope that various forms of collaborative efforts can work in
other areas, as well, for example, in scientific research and pharmaceuti-
cal research and in education and so forth."
   Weinberger believes that although Wikipedia does not have good edi-
tors in the traditional sense, "it does have alert readers that seem to be
doing a pretty good job in most of the areas." And although it can be
difficult for the "everyman" to surf through all the online noise and under-
stand, for instance, that Wikipedia is very often not the best source of
12 SurfingThroughNoise: Riding The Online Knowledge Wave




valid information, "we have always been very good in real life with judg-
ing credibility and nuance. Of course, we get fooled, too, but, in general,
we know that if it looks like The National Inquirer, we should take it with
many grains of salt."
   Weinberger goes on to say that "the biggest, most controversial claim
that has emerged from the web in the past five years is that, in fact, the
interaction between people unknown to each other tends, in some circum-
stances, to produce reliable knowledge. That is the claim. I tend to think
that it does and it doesn't. A lot of the most interesting developments on
the Internet have been exactly around us, together, figuring out how we
are going to figure out who to trust and believe."
   Like Weinberger, Wade Roush, former West Coast senior editor of MIT's
Technology Review Magazine, is not so much concerned about today's
everyman being unable to decipher the vast and varied quality of credibil-
ity that lives on the web. "I put a lot of trust in people's good sense," he
says. Roush, however, might disagree with Weinberger's views on
Wikipedia. "At the Technology Review we have a very rigorous fact-check-
ing process, and the fact checkers will not accept Wikipedia as a source
for back-ground information, and for good reason. You have no idea
whether a Wikipedia article is mostly true or was just hacked by someone
and is now all wrong." On the other hand, Roush does admit that "you can
use Wikipedia as a launching point for finding more information (on just
about any given topic)."

Questions About Scholarly Authority,
Books and the Library of Tomorrow
   Roush also brings up a good conversation about Net Generation stu-
dents in higher education and their notions concerning the definition and
recognition of scholarly authority discovered online. "I would hate to be a
college professor right now because I would not know how to deal with
term papers that come in where the entire bibliography is comprised of
URLs," he says. "I think we are in midst of a generational change in the
understanding of what scholarly authority is." Roush adds that when he
was in college, before the web, his senior thesis was based on books and
other printed materials that he had to dig out of his university's academic
library. "Now it is possible to write an entire undergraduate thesis without
ever setting foot in a library," he says. "And I think you can imagine hav-
ing a hard time arguing to a 22-year-old today that his or her thesis would
have been more credible if they had gone to the library and found a bunch
of books. They would probably say those books are old."
                                             What Is This World Wide Web? 13




   Roush is right, but this kind of thinking is no longer confined to only
22-year-olds. In short, college and university libraries are striving for a
better understanding of what really constitutes scholarly research in a digital
age. Like all of higher education, libraries are in the process of figuring
out the best ways and methods for discovering and sharing intelligent,
trustworthy information that is already published, or publishable, online.
   Due to the growth of mass digitization and new communications and
information technologies, higher education library physical spaces are
changing into socially interactive learning environments where books are
not as prevalent as they have been in the past. This point was brought out,
anecdotally, in a series of Association of American Universities work-
shops in which leaders at research institutions were asked about their plans
to build more libraries. The general consensus was that newly built librar-
ies would not be shelving as many books in their primary physical space
as they have in the past, with vast quantities of their holdings being moved
into off-campus high-density, retrievable storage facilities. Then, the ques-
tion became "What are you going to put in your libraries?" The common
denominator was a coffee shop. 5

    In a sense the library was becoming a people place that provided the
    tools, the services, the expertise to support learning and scholarship,
    but along with that, an environment for social interaction. So it raised
    the obvious question of what is the university library in the digital
    age. 6

  The answer is akin to the old cliché that the more things change the
more they stay the same:

    Because of the wealth of online materials, many scholars can do their
    research and writing anywhere, yet ironically we find ourselves going
    to the library no less frequently than we did before. We go for help
    with using online resources and to learn about software that supports
    our scholarship. . . 7

  Only now they can also grab a cup of coffee and connect with like-
minded colleagues in a more socially interactive space.

Surfing Through Noise Via Your Public Library Access
   On another level concerning access to the growing wealth of online
library materials, Gary Price, director of information resources at Ask.com,
14 SurfingThroughNoise: Riding The Online Knowledge Wave




founder and chief editor of the popular ResourceShelf weblog, and a dis-
tinguished academic librarian, frequently talks about how most people
are unaware of the vast amount of viable, authoritative and trustworthy
online materials available through public libraries across the country.
   "What gets past just about everybody I have spoken to is what public
libraries have to offer," he says. "Public libraries have full text and con-
tent of hundreds of different databases and, depending on the library, it's
all available for free 24/7/365. All you need is a library card. For ex-
ample, in the Washington, DC metro area there is reciprocity between all
the major libraries at the county level. Through the Arlington County pub-
lic library in Virginia I have access to the full text and images of every
article published in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the
New York Times."
   Moreover, Price says that most libraries in the United States, either at
the state or county levels, now offer 24/7 Q and A services. At some pub-
lic library systems, for instance, patrons can chat online with a profes-
sional librarian who will then direct them to viable sources on the open
web as well as to the databases available through their public library sys-
tem. For examples, Price points to California's, AskNow.org and Massa-
chusetts' MassAnswers.org, both of which have live online interactive
reference services.
   "The solution (to effectively surf through noise) is to become a better
consumer of what is out there and understanding the strengths and weak-
nesses of each product," Price continues. "As a consumer I want to know
what each search engine has to offer and where the information is coming
from. I don't think enough attention is being put towards that, especially
in our educational system."

As We See More, Do We Learn More?
   Mark Glaser, author and host of the PBS-sponsored MediaShift weblog,
talks about how it has become more important than ever to educate our-
selves and to take a closer look inside the origins and manifestations of
our sources of information inside this new media, this new participatory/
DIY culture, this new knowledge culture. "I think we were lazier before;
we just accepted what we were fed," he says, referring to our past habits
for ingesting news and information from a much lesser quantity of sources.
"Now that we see more, we are starting to understand what it takes to
actually put together a news story." The growth of citizen journalism, for
instance, where anyone can take a photograph or video of the news, write
about or broadcast what's going on as it occurs, and publish it online in a
matter of minutes, has brought about a new information- and news-gath-
                                            What Is This World Wide Web? 15




ering experience that forces us to pay closer attention to our sources of
information and ultimately choose the most trustworthy and authoritative
among numerous options.
   "But I don't think we have seen the solution yet; I still feel like we are
grasping" (at finding a way to effectively surf through the noise), adds
Glaser. "Editors can help solve the problem of too much information. Or,
having a trusted aggregator can help. Digg (and sites like Digg), for in-
stance, with this idea of community aggregation, looks interesting, but
I'm not totally sold on that yet. I think there needs to be a killer combina-
tion of community-generated news and editors both working in collabora-
tion together."

What's Next?
   To state the obvious, there are, indeed, numerous answers and tools
available to us online. In the next chapters I look closely at what may be
considered those "killer combinations," and much more, that are moving
us through the noise in ways that are making us much smarter and better
informed. I also explore the dark side of the web, where misinformation
runs rampant and where charlatans lurk beneath the surface. Additionally,
I provide methods and strategies for effectively dealing with and sifting
through all the noise that confronts us online everyday in its myriad forms.
   Overall, the World Wide Web is impossible to track effectively. It is
loaded with hard-to-find authoritative and trustworthy content and packed
with both stupidity and wisdom. It continues to grow at an enormously
fast rate through mass digitization and through the adoption of new me-
dia. And so far I have only scratched the surface of the web.
   Some very important elements of the Internet, the web and today's in-
formation age will be covered throughout this book, including mashups,
mobile computing, unbiquitous computing, social networking,
cyberinfrastructure, web services, virtual worlds, grid computing, social
networking and bookmarking, content aggregators, podcasting, RSS feeds
and Ajax and Atom, bit torrent, Library 2.0, the Long Tail, collaborative
authorship, and citizen journalism. Plus, there are many other terms and
topics of interest related to the information explosion spreading online
that I have yet to discover or explore. Each day I am surprised by some
new development or turn of events that looks to have the potential of
bringing about dramatic change.
   At the risk of sounding corny ­"Surf's Up, Dude," ­ let's ride the online
knowledge wave, stay balanced, learn how to avoid nasty undertows, know
where we are at all times and reach the shoreline safely so we can hop on
the next wave.
16 SurfingThroughNoise: Riding The Online Knowledge Wave




End Notes:

1. Seth Maislin, "Eighteen million people can't be wrong," Seth Maislin's
   Indexing Blog," December 28, 2006, http://maislin.blogpsot.com

2. Jaron Lanier, "Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Col-
   lectivism," Edge, May, 30, 2006, http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/
   lanier06/lanier06_index.html

3. Steven Johnson, "Digital Maoism," The New York Times Magazine,
   6th Annual Year in Ideas, December 10, 2006.

4. Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production
   Transforms Markets and Freedom (New Haven, London: Yale Uni-
   versity Press, 2006), 2.

5. James J. Duderstadt, from The Research Library in the 21st Century
   Symposium, The University of Texas at Austin, University of Texas
   Libraries, September 11, 2006 transcript, pp. 21-22 http://
   www.lib.utexas.edu/symposium/

6. Ibid

7. Bernard Frischer, from The Research Library in the 21st Century Sym-
   posium, The University of Texas at Austin, University of Texas Li-
   braries, September 12, 2006 transcript, page 10, http://
   www.lib.utexas.edu/symposium/