Scuttlebutt

By Mitch McFarland

     It seems that for everything that the Internet creates it destroys something else.  In many cases this is intentional (Uber vs taxis), but much of the time it is due to collateral damage.  Where it bothers me most is with the so-called news.  I say “so-called” because much of what is put on news feeds today  would never have met the threshold of importance to have been reported prior to the Internet.  This tends to dilute the importance of, well, important news.

     Newspapers and magazines only have so many pages, so editors need to be selective as to what they put on paper.  This is not the case with the Internet with its boundless capacity to spew information like a firehose.  What matters now to online publishers is the number of clicks a story receives since the quality or importance of the story means nothing to advertisers.  They are only interested in eyeballs.  As we have all seen ad nausea things are put online that are purely designed to catch our interest.  Everything appears together as though they are of equal importance.  Unfortunately, the way things are presented online, they are all of equal importance.  A story's value is determined later when the count of clicks comes in.  Thus we are presented side by side stories about Joe Manchin's corruption and the 12 ft. snake that was wrapped around some guys neck.  Which is likely to get the most clicks?  Is it any surprise that there is so much discussion on the “dumbing down” of Americans?

     My homepage is something called Refdesk.  It has literally hundreds of links to information that may be of value to someone such as direct access to most major search engines, numerous dictionaries, travel directions and many map sites,area codes for the nation, contact for elected officials, Kelley Blue Book, first aids sites, Roberts Rules of Order, games, CIA World Fact Book, and so much more.  Another thing it has is news feeds from  26 different news organizations.  This is my starting point for the “day's news”.

     Much of what is presented is the same on each feed due to the presence of what is called “pack journalism” where everyone feels the need to report on the same story.  If one of the Kardasians stubs their toe an army of reporters rush to tell the story because it will get some clicks.  The public has been trained to believe that the lives of these pampered knuckleheads is suppose to matter to us as a nation.  And why not when we are constantly deluged with this crap?   It becomes a viscous cycle.  The more we hear about something, the more we think it is important and the more we click on something the more likely it is that we will read more about it. Also, we are each individually targeted with links to stories (and products) in which we have previously shown interest.  This narrowing down of what is presented to us eventually insulates us from anything that we don't like or are not even aware of.

     So what is the solution?  Turn off the Internet?  Not only is that an impossibility on a national level, but most people would be very upset without access to the ton of information that they would have a hard time accessing without the web.  I, for example, would dearly miss Wikipedia.

     Part of an answer is to read your local newspaper.  That seems odd in a era when most people under 40 have never read a paper edition.  Maybe they could start a movement and call reading paper editions  the “new” thing.

     Of course, that idea is coming a little late as so many local papers have gone out of business due to advertisers switching to the Internet.  Also, a consolidation is occurring as large entities buy up regional papers that still have an income stream.  These papers are then homogenized until they all tell the same stories.

     It seems the only papers that are not under sever pressure are the very local papers (such as this one) that does not rely on national corporate advertisers.  These papers rely on local businesses advertising to local readers.  A local coffee shop may have a Facebook page or even a website, but they spend their advertising dollars on local publications.

     It is funny to think that Alvin Toffler popularized the phrase “information overload” in his book Future Shock back in 1970.  That seems like such an innocent time by today's standards.  CBS's Walter Cronkite was still the most trusted source of news in those days.

     I believe that we currently are all mentally blown away by the amount of information fed to us.  There are no simple methodologies for quickly processing, comparing and evaluating information sources, so we gravitate to whatever information makes us feel good.  What else can we do?

     It has be stated in many different ways, but what is obvious is that within the global village we are all backing ourselves into our comfy corners.  I wish I had an answer for how to break this pattern, but I don't.  Of course more emphasis on critical thinking in schools would be nice, but isn't that what many us see as the solution to so many problems:  have the schools teach kids to share my values and  be more like me.  Pity the schools.

     I'l leave you with Noam Chomsky's take on this idea: “The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites, through the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information.”