theinforager

The Inforager goes hunting today for….

…an understanding of context and how it shapes everything, especially on the net where context is not always clear, isn’t always disclosed and isn’t always wanted.

I hadn’t thought about such a lofty concept even once until I zipped past the convenience of on line shopping and the endless beckoning indulgences of online entertainment and I started really using the internet—-started looking and poking and turning on mega streams of information to support the operation of our agency, to find talent, create ideas, communicate with peers and pursue another chapter in my education.

When I was a CONSUMER I didn’t so much care about the veracity of information. My main cyber concern was security. Was I safe from renegade hackers and the horrors of innumerable viruses and spyware.

Now that I am a USER and on my way, hopefully, to real CITIZEN well, I find that life isn’t quite so simple.

Now that I have to rely on what’s out there to really drive my life, not just make it more fun or convenient, I find myself confronted with a wholly different concept— What’s real? What’s true? What’s right? What’s wrong? Who’s who? How do I know? How do I check? Whom do I trust?

With 12 million bloggers and a billion web sites running full speed 24/7 content is ubiquitous. Opinions, points of view and the opportunity to post, parse and comment on everybody else’s bits and bites makes the flip side of the net, what I call the REALNET (vs. the entertainNET or the shopNET) a really compelling and intimidating marketplace of thoughts, ideas and information.

Of course there are any number of raging debates around well-raised questions or issues like authority and filtering or credibility and veracity. The answers are a little harder to get to and even harder to accept without more research and study and contemplation. The blessing and the curse of the net!

But I think the thing that helps me separate fact from fiction, mess from message—is CONTEXT.

Who is the source? From where? What organization, political point of view or group do they belong to/espouse/represent? Is this old authority (Fox, CNN, CBS, Encyclopedia Britannica, McGraw-Hill texts? College professors? ) or new (wikipedia?, news feeds) speaking? Is this a popular or well-published voice or an unknown?

We have a lot of tools to help us identify what we believe to be sources of interest and lots of ways to zip, zap and deliver information.

We live in a world of sound bites and newspeak. Buzz words. Shorthand. Texting. Emoticons. Education at the speed of life.

However, at this speed and in this form of speech, there isn’t much time to acquire, debate, filter, absorb. We tag. We bookmark. We subscribe. But do we stop to think?

It’s all good. The conversation is wide ranging, deep and rich with many voices.

But is it all ok? All useful? All real? All trustworthy? The debate rages.

Without authorities, without sages, experts and mavens to sort it all out for us how could it be ok? Isn’t it human nature (and one of the founding principles of democracy) that the greatest number of people want to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people? Doesn’t that guarantee some measure of integrity or sanity? Or does it? What about profiteers or privateers? What about those exploit or co-opt truth to serve their own ideas and agenda? What is opinion, what is fact, what is propaganda? Agggh.

Context can offer some answers.

Recently for a class assignment I watched a video posted in two different places: on an educational site and on Youtube. Same video. Same comedian. Same funny bit but viewed in two completely different contexts.

The post was comedian Don Novello doing a bit called the Five Minute University back in the late 70’s. It was itself an extraordinarily on the nose commentary about modern life. The premise: you can learn everything a college grad will remember five years after graduation, in five minutes! Hilarious.

The Youtube site of course had the usual information: category, tags and other related subjects and the benefit of commentary. There were lots of people TELLING you the bit was funny. And many had their own ideas about which parts were and were not funny and how relevant it was to their life and their situation.

The clip runs cold on the education wiki. Same bit. Not as funny. Again, context filters an initial reaction—it’s a wry comment on education at an educational site. But without the rest of the information Youtube supplied ( I know, I know do you really need a comedy category tag to know it’s funny!) and without the number of people talking about how funny it is, it just doesn’t resonate.

It’s the difference between watching a comedy in a theatre full of rowdy people on a Saturday night or watching it home alone or on a plane. It’s funny, but not the side splitting, belly laugh ‘til you want to puke funny that it is with 200 other people. Don’t believe me, watch “Borat” at home tonight by yourself, on your desktop. With no one else around to be shocked, startled, prodded into laughing along with him Borat is funny, but not THAT funny. Not as funny as say, when the old couple next to me in the theatre sat gawping and trying not to look away as he wrestled his partner naked.

The subject of context isn’t new. A nude photo of a 12 year old is art in a museum and porno on your desktop. Newspaper and magazines use context to sway opinion even when they are supposedly neutral. How about this—ask yourself if Hannity and Colmes on Fox is produced by the entertainment or news division.

Does knowing that the news division produces their show make you believe they are journalists rather than commentators? Does it become more credible than the same show produced by the entertainment division (the show is not, it’s produced by the News Division)?

Ditto many other prime time pundits that people see as journalists who are actually commentators. We suppose (and we are supposed to come to this conclusion) that because their shows are produced under the formerly sacrosanct aegis of the group that produces news, what they offer must be news. In fact, what the pundits offer is a regurgitation of news laced with commentary. And when they start blogging (O’Reilly Factor) are they journalists, commentators or just opinionated citizens. Does their identity itself create a CONTEXT that shapes the message?

I don’t pretend to know ANY of the answers here but I do enjoy asking myself and others the questions. And in this context—this anonymous, blogging into the ether, I wonder if I am adding to the problem, sparking a discussion about the solution or just a drop in an ocean of irrelevance.