Baron, Chapters 9-12

Blog Posting Due Monday, March 3, 2014:

Summary

            Chapter 9, “Everyone’s an Author” discusses the saturation of authorship as the Internet has made writing easier and an audience for that writing always present.  Baron discusses that writing has changed from the scribes’ role of replication to the modern quest for originality.  To explore modern day publication, Baron uses the blog as a case study.  He discusses that blogs are mainly written by teenagers, but also have been upheld in courts for politicians and reporters.  Schools, keeping the tradition of trying to exclude technology, often censor blogs, and this censorship is upheld in courts.

            Chapter 10, “A Space of One’s Own,” discusses the proliferation of MySpace and Facebook as a new type of public, personal space.  Baron also discusses Wikipedia and the issue it represents of whether truth is best maintained by open content or closely guarded content.  Baron uses Wikipedia as an example of how digital spaces are reinventing the roles of writers and readers: “The very existence of multiple, ongoing authorship—the essence of the wiki text—forces us to rethink the roles of reader and writer” (p. 206).

            Chapter 11, “The Dark Side of the Web,” discusses the negative aspects of the web such as hate groups and censorship.  For example, Baron discusses the irony of Google being a free disseminator of information in the United States, but agreeing to censor that information in China in order to tap into their seemingly boundless Internet audience.  He uses this point to demonstrate that although the Internet is often seen as a limitless source of free information, this information is not neutral and is curated for us, whether by censors or by algorithms. 

            Chapter 12, “From Pencils to Pixels,” Baron sums up his book with a few cautions and questions about where the current digital writing revolution will go in the future.  Baron discusses some ironies of the information age.  For instance, although information seems more freely accessible than ever, companies maintaining proprietary information closely guard this information.  In addition, this information, even though it does not tax resources for paper or pencils, still requires natural, finite resources-specifically, all those digital tools run off of electricity and “server farms” (Baron, 2009, p. 240).  Finally, Baron ends with a question of where this digital writing and reading will take us next.

Critique

            The theme from this reading that most interested me was the theme of curation.  This theme was discussed in Chapter 11.  I think that most people think of the Internet as a tool for democratizing information-information there is perceived as free to all, searchable as long as the user types in the correct search terms.  However, most users rarely think about this information being curated for them.  They are only seeing information that algorithms deem worthy.  In places like China, where government dictates and filters that information, users only see what the government and companies such as Google have contracted to reveal.  The interesting and, perhaps unnerving, side of this is that I don’t think people understand that information on the Internet is filtered in any way.  The perception is that the Internet is freely distributed information.  I think this is an important issue to be educated about because we need to be mindful of what information is available and how this information is being censored or curated.

Connection

            I am currently working on a project in which I help students build websites to be advocates for a chosen social issue.  This project is more important to me than ever as I think it teaches students to use the Internet for more academic, socially important issues.  I value this time to teach students about writing in these spaces especially as Baron points out that schools have traditionally tried to censor or ban students’ online writing.  I think one of the issues that Baron points out is teaching students not only how to find information online, but also teaching them how this information may also be filtered.  I don’t think this is something that average students are aware of.