Great post — put me in mind of a piece written way back in 1999 by the venerable Douglas adams — way ahead of his time, as usual.

I think more people “get” it now… but we still have a way to go before everyone’s on board. I live and work in West Cork, Ireland. You’d be amazed how many people struggle with e-mail here… and even more amazed by how many haven’t even reached the “struggling” stage.

I’ve been trying to introduce local small business owners to social media through a a local business networking blog, but it’s hard to get past the scepticism.

Things are changing, yes, but resistance to change is a very strong human trait… it takes time.

Let me try saying what Andy was saying a different way. You have certain internal notions of whom to trust, both on the Internet and in the real world, and shadings of distrust to use with people you don’t know well. Those same shadings work to the same degree online as offline, once you get used to it. We even call cops when we see crime or fraud, although the things they’re good at getting are different than in the physical world.

You expect your supermarket to have labels on food, but not saying “This is a commercial, medium-chain supermarket,” right, as you can probably figure it out from the big brand name sign and the people with shopping carts in the parking lot. I can figure out usually figure out what kind of site I’m at quickly, too, from labeling, top content and context.

“Flooded with un-thought out and mediocre material,” Mr. Gilbert? You make it sound as bad as a newsstand!

Have thee no humour?

I didn’t say that it was. I said that profit has very little to do with corruption and unethical behavior.

> Why do internet enthusiasts always see the internet as an exclusive place that is free from social norms and the normal governance measures?

Who said that it was? In fact, I pointed out that none of the stated concerns were actually internet specific.

Why do internet enthusiasts always see the internet as an exclusive place that is free from social norms and the normal governance measures? It exists in the world, remember…

Jeff, given that the House of Commons, and PMQ in particular, is widely regarded as a petulant, childish, and evasive form of “debate”, it’s rather depressing to see you – the evangelist for this great new form of discourse (i.e. blogging) – adopt its rhetoric.

Apart from the opening sentence, nothing in that is internet-specific.

And, if you think that “profit” is the only source of corruption, bias, and evil, you clearly don’t have much experience with actual humans. Money is actually the smallest and least effective source of corruption. True-believers are far worse.)

Like, where precisely? Please tell me. I find the internet generally extremely disappointing. A good reference library is much more useful and so is a good debating society – or even a gathering of really articulate friends.

The internet is flooded with un-thought out and mediocre material. Even shopping can be a clumsy and disappointingly inefficient process. I love the concept of it – I would not be without it. But it is startlingly imperfect and very very wasteful at the moment (and probably, by its nature, needs to continue to be so.) Something is growing before our very eyes (and beneath our feet). But whether it is a morass of wastefulness or a sea of contentmnet remains to be seen!

The first must be revealed to the speaker in advance, with one unknown follow-up. So, to prevent the questions being known to the Speaker and PM in advance, traditionally the first question is “can the Prime Minster tell us his schedule for today”.

For this reason, until Blair changed it, the first answer was always the “I refer you to the answer I gave a moment ago” as all the first questions were the same.

I’ve translated your article to Portuguese and posted it to my blog, giving you all the credits, of course. Hope is not a problem. Thanks for this enlightening text.

You see a whole lot of this very phenomenon in our democracy. How many times do you actually hear a congressman or woman get up to make a speech when *it doesn’t* become clear that what they are saying is really nothing more than code directed at a specific constituency they are trying to motivate one way or the other? No deliberation there and I’d even go so far as to say that some, if not most, of that blather is intended to demonstrate a lack of willingness to deliberate!

Looking at your list, it strikes me that all the items on it come from comparing the known media world to the unknown one, and expecting the salient features of the newer form to show up via such a comparison.

In fact the comparison is valid, but the starting point–editorial controls that cover all cases in a closed, one-to-many news system– is not the only starting point. Not necessarily the best or the right one. You could see these ritualized “comebacks” as expressions of frustration when that method of understanding fails. You can compare open systems to closed ones; it gets you only so far. But you can also compare open systems to other open systems,

The conversation you have been having goes something like this: Jeff starts

Look, it’s an uncontrolled system:

But there are no controls!

That’s why I just said: it’s an uncontrolled system

That’s chaos!

No, there’s order to it, but not the one you’re expecting–

All I see is chaos, and invitations to bad actors.

That’s not all it is, you’re–

Don’t get me wrong, I think more voices is GREAT

and you never get there, do you?

I tried to wrestle with this in my Kent State talk: If Bloggers Had No Ethics Blogging Would Have Failed, But it Didn’t. So Let’s Get a Clue. Starts like this:

1. Because we have the Web, there are now closed and open editorial systems: they are different animals.

They don’t work the same way, or produce the same goods. One does not replace the other. They are not enemies, either. Ideas that work perfectly well in one—and describe the world in that setting—may not work in understanding the other: they misdescribe the world in a shifted setting…