Interrogate New Media Professor Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky is a Professor of New Media at Hunter College in NYC, currently on leave while he works with the acceleratorgroup. And writes. Prolifically. About almost everything to do with the Internet, with sidelong glances at Open Source and Linux, which (yes) he uses as his everyday operating system. What should you ask Clay? Take a look at his personal site, read some of what he's written, and go from there. (He's so wide-ranging that he's hard to pin down!) We'll forward 10 of the highest-moderated questions to him Thursday afternoon (US EST), and will post his answers early next week.

Long-term solution to content reward needed

I agree with you that micropayments are not coming any time soon. But I worry that the net is not accurately communicating its need for quality content -- and its willingness to pay for same.

Amongst any group of users, my bet is that you'll find several who would pay for improvements in the quality and nature of the information they receive. Obviously there is great value in correct and timely information. In some cases, it is nothing short of a life or death matter. In most cases it simply keeps us a little better informed.

I don't understand, therefore, why none of your proposed solutions (aggregation, subscription, subsidy) have evolved yet. Every site that I've seen try subscription has given up (except one: the WSJ). And everyone agrees that subsidy in the form of advertising is not going to fly.

Many high-quality sites that deserve to survive are having a tough time of it, and it's not for lack of readership. The Onion hasn't created any multi-millionaires; it should have. Salon has had layoffs. The Straight Dope should make more money on its website than on its books. User Friendly should not have to resort to dead tree publishing or syndication.

In short, while Fucked Company celebrates the death of the crappy sites and stupid business plans, the quality sites are in danger of dying as well. What's gone wrong? Why haven't any models come about that support what people really want?

Evolution of the net

A lot of organisations are pushing foward with more and more fancy multimedia features for the web, despite the fact that eyeball tracking experiments show that people tend to ignore even static images in favour of plain text.

Do you think that we need any of this new technology, and will it ever become the standard format for the web?

In that regard New == OLD.

I've been noticing over the years a slow, steady decline in the quality of the Journalistic Endeavor. Slipshod reporting, etc. is not solely in the New Media's baliwick. This is not to tar the entire profession, but merely to point out that there's been raftloads of BS printed online and off that's not been thought out, researched, etc.

Worthwhile to scratch and start over?

I read your "DNS System is Coming Apart At the Seams" article with pointed interest. It is a topic I frequently harp on in private conversations -- the lack of a human-focused network and network protocols.

I've puzzled over the implications myself, but I'd be interested to hear your opinion -- Is it worthwhile to simply scratch what we have and begin anew, basing the new decisions made on more current assumptions?

For example, hardware is cheap and reliable (as compared to 20 years ago), bandwidth is cheap and getting cheaper. Should the networking protocols reflect this new reality?

An open garden?

The big players in the interactive television game are all building their own walled gardens. What kind of effort would it take for interactive television to evolve into a more web-like open garden model? Which new media players could fight the traditional broadcasters for a place on the screen in the living room?

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Does New Media need journalism training?

Does the New Media need journalism training?

In the bad old days, journalists almost always got some training before they were unleashed on the public. Boring things like finding out a complete story, verifying rumors before publishing, disclosing conflicts of interest, journalist integrity, and a whole host of other things (including spelling and grammar).

Due to the rise of New Media, anyone with a web page can be a journalist, regardless of their qualifications. The Drudge Report is the canonical example. Matt Drudge can post any rumor he hears, without having to verify it.

Now, I'm not sure I want to go back to the old way of journalism, but should New Media editors at least try to follow some basic journalist ethics and principles?

If they should, how should they try to implement them?

Thanks,

George

The internet and the wild west

Not to be cynical, but...

There was a time when internet users seemed to be able to regulate themselves. Viri weren't being passed, Spam was not tolerated, crackers were academics without criminal intent, intellectual property was not violated, information was free, domain names were free and not squatted, IP addresses were abundant, and privacy was maintained.

Then the hoards moved online; like the land-grabs in the wild west. Good domain names are gone, nothing can stop spam (nobody in their right mind would post to a usenet news group anymore), script-kiddie crackers and new viri are abundant, using rights of privacy to gain anonymity, and copyrighted software and entertainment are traded for free, without respect for the copyright owner. Web pages have become more marketing than information (the marketing is free for you to consume, the information will cost you).

Laws and regulations have not been able to cope; they've (somewhat) maintained the privacy, but can do nothing about the criminal behavior.

With the lawlessness, bounty hunters have moved in, like those mentioned in:

http://slashdot.org/yro/01/02/21/1852252.shtml

This, along with court orders like squelching Napster by song titles and the MP3.com and DeCss decisions, will threaten free speech, fair use, and the privacy we've strived to maintain.

Like the wild west, times will change, and once they do: there will be nothing left of the original state of the internet. Microsoft, with it's .net initiative, is moving to take control of the internet and make every port and protocol it's proprietary property.

I hope I'm not oversimplifying the history of the net, but I have a very different perspective than you show in your writing.

Your upbeat analysis seems to disregard most these issues, you seem to see the internet as it once was, but not where it's been going.

DCMA Encryption and Mass File Sharing

Can you make a prediction?

I'm interested in your prediction for how the next two years will pan out with regard to all the litigation around mass file sharing (see: Napster) and its relationships to DCMA and possible future twists with parties circumventing "protection means" like encryption.

Recent developments have been interesting to follow, but I'm wondering if the furure is going to be getting scarier and more worrisome, or level out and more reasonable... and your contribution to this queston is most welcome.

Internet Civilization

I think that it is well agreed that the Internet is changing civilzation. The slightly tongue in cheek, but serious question is "Changing it into what?"

The spectrum of possible futures ranges from Utopian to paranoia making 1984 look like a children's tea party. And Idealism aside, there is a large class of people who like being sheeple, having all the tough decisions made for them.

So that is the question - what is the Internet changing civilization into?

Evolution and Good Usability

In your open letter to Jakob Nielsen [shirky.com] you say that evolution must decide what's good design. I agree that you can't force people into good design, but is the evolution doing us any good so far?

For example, I can read web pages on a normal mobile phone. I like that, it's my own little hack, it's far from good, but it can do the job. Now, if usable web sites had been designed, we would all be able to read web on our mobile phones. Another example: Speech browsers. I'd like a box to plug into my hifi, and I want to relax in my best chair talking to my browser, having it read pages for me, playing music, etc. Both these things have been possible for years, but they require good, usable pages.

It seems to me that the evolution isn't the fastest method of getting good design, mainly because people don't know what they never see, people like to have web on their phones, but they don't know that all that is needed is for web designers to do their job properly, and so there is no evolutionary pressure for designers to do their job properly.

OK, so to the question, how do you want to create this pressure?

Micropayments

In your article "The Case Against Micropayments" [openp2p.com] you state the case against micropayments. Has anything in the intervening time changed your mind (i.e. the collapse of content), or do you believe that the fundamentals of micropayments are impossible to achieve? Does your problem with micropayments stem primarily with pay-per-view, or rather the concept of mandatorily user supported sites (i.e. extrapolating micropayments to include subscriptions or content packs)?

yafla! [yafla.com]

Hi, I'm one of those Seattle protesters.

After reading your piece on the WTO, [feedmag.com] I have a question for you.

What do you think of the Indymedia phenomenon?

Or, more broadly, do you feel that the increasing accessibility of digital cameras and other tools, which lower the cost of putting a strong Web-based newsroom together, might challenge the increasingly corporate system of mainstream news?

Interestingly, you don't mention Indymedia [indymedia.org] in that article, but we're a collective of people who gets equipment out to intereted people, to cover the protests on the inside.

They have connected live, streaming news about protests all over the world, including the recent UN climate talks, the WTO, the World Economic Forum, and the march of the Zapatistas to Mexico City.

Although Indymedia started in Seattle, there are IMC bureaus all over the world now.

I think they've done two important things- popularized the "movement against corporate globalization," and created a forum for debate.

The debate you talk about- between the protesters who want to fix institutions like the WTO and the ones who want to abolish them- is taking place in the discussion rooms of Indymedia. Check it out!

-perdida

Do we hold successful New Media outlets to higher

standards?

Do we hold New Media outlets that have made it (millions of page views per month) to higher ethical standards than someone running a homepage on an ISP dial up account?

There seems to be an attitude at some New Media outlets of Hey, it's my site and I'm doing what I want with it!

Now, I can understand this attitude if it's a part time site, with maybe 20 page view of day. But when you grow into a leading New Media outlet with 30 million page views a month, shouldn't this attitude change?

William Randolph Hearst was accused of starting the Spanish American war to increase circulation for his newspaper. This was rightly decried, you can safely stand on a street corner and advocate war, but when you have a bully pulpit of millions of readers, you should be expected to have more accountability and responsibility. Sadly, I'm not always seeing this on New Media outlets.

Should New Media outlets be more aware of journalistic integrity. Now, at Slashdot Rob Malda almost always let's us know about his VA LInux holding when he writes about VA Linux. He also posts stories about VA Linux's financial problems, to his credit. Should it be a policy that any New Media editor mention all conflicts of interest? Do they realize that with the ease of transferring cash, and the ease of faek indentities, New Media editors need to be cleaner than Caeser's wife.

Computers and humans.

The way that people interact and exchange information over the internet has been one of your favourite topics.

What do you think the "information age" is doing to humans regarding their ability to socialize and interact. With the advent of television in the 1950's, there was criticism that television eroded communities by keeping people in their homes. Right now, the so called "MTV Generation" allegedly has the attention span of a 30 second soundbyte.

Many phenomona have been cited as a result of this. Some believe that because so much time is spent infront of televisions, alone, the population is segregated and isolated, unable to work as a community. Others would argue that television technology has merely expanded the community to a national or international level. Still others would refute that this monoculture is dangerous and allows our cultural identity to stagnate.

In the late 90's and now in the early parts of the "new millenium" we've seen an increasing amount of information being transacted over the internet. Does the web as we know it enhance our ability to communicate, or does it further isolate us?

Does a more distributed, decentralized peer2peer model of information exchange promise a type of interaction more natural to humans, or should we be for strategies to prevent further information glut and saturation?