old and new

I read recently that Andrew Keen, who has written a stinging critique of the internet, is a rather unpopular man. From the little I have seen or heard of him (including an interview on an American public broadcaster) he seems like an eminently sensible and eloquent chap.

In a nutshell, Keen argues that much of what passes for information on the web is a pure waste of time. Blogs, home pages, infopedias and the like are just an unedited, chaotic and often inanely trivial mess cobbled together by amateurs. Most pertinently, there is no way of gauging quality or accuracy in the manner, for example, that the 'old media' could through editorial oversight.

He has a point. Most blogs, if not free advertising plugs, are unweeded gardens. Well-intentioned beginnings peter into nothing or become strings of personal photos. Nothing wrong with that I suppose, though probably no-one is paying attention.

Worse are the so-called unmediated 'news' sites where information is lifted from 'old media' sources, often without accreditation. Or tedious opinion pieces containing little or no factual content.

Of course, poor writing or shoddy practices were invented in the old media. But where in the past we could fairly clearly differentiate between tabloid and serious journalism and the papers and magazines from which they sprung, the internet offers no such opportunity.

Maybe these are teething problems for the most part, or symptoms of a wider malaise. If no-one controls or mediates the content, then how do you establish standards? It strikes me that this is an impossible question to answer, for people will not accept 'interference' on the web or any imposition on free speech.

So an unweeded garden it must remain.