Web 2.0
Well I, for one, am quite chuffed to be named person of the year by Time. Here I thought I was just blethering away personal nonsense for my friends and any randoms who happen by (welcome, by the way), and it turns out that I am part of an information revolution. Through sharing my views, opinions and news regarding the state of me in writing this blog, posting on a couple of messageboards, watching YouTube, commenting on friends' myspaces, I am helping to fundamentally impact the way that information is shared in today's world - and taking my tiny place in history.
No longer do I - or anyone else - have to rely on media moguls' interpretation of world events or embittered critics thoughts on films, books, music; we can all nip online and be immediately connected to a global network of random people like me chatting about our experiences. People who don't need to adhere to any editorial guidelines nor worry about selling papers; people just reporting our world as we see it; pure news unfiltered by the political or commercial agendas that all too often taint information we receive through traditional media.
Or are we?
The ultra democratic-ness (see? It's my blog, I can make up words if I want to) of the information presented on the Internet is a mind-bogglingly (and again) double edged sword. Anyone with internet access - which is a pretty hefty percentage of the world's population - can start up a blog, post on a messageboard, set up their own page. You don't have to be a great (or even good) writer with anything in particular (never mind interesting) to say; you don't have to be in full possession of your marbles; and no one is making you tell the truth.
While most of us have a pretty healthy cynicism with regards to the truth and nothing but the truth in the media, the old adage "don't believe everything you read" is even more applicable to the Internet. Articles bound for newspapers, magazines or television have to adhere to strict editorial standards and are rigorously verified by litigation-minded fact-checkers, but what's to stop me writing an utter load of nonsense here? Would you guess it wasn't true? How do you know that anything I have written here is true? Do you care?
Further, what's to stop me creating a myspace page or blog or messageboard account for somebody entirely fictional? Or, even more dangerously, someone who is perfectly real but isn't me? I realize that most public figures these days keep their (or their staff's) eyes open for such impersonations, but by the time the blog or whatever is pulled - would the damage already be done? I've been amazed before by the speed with which stories which started out fairly true have zipped out of control in a global game of chinese whispers; whats to stop me from starting one entirely of my own invention?
Very little, other than common decency. A few years ago, I produced a project television project which inadvertantly touched on this. We created a fictional tv series (as in, it didn't exist), hired (okay, bribed with beer) actors to play the actors in this series (still with me?) and sent them out on the town in London. The idea was to take a look at how easy it is to create a "celebrity" out of nothing but PR fluff - I would call up top London clubs posing as a PR girl looking after the cast of this non-existent show and arrange for a VIP guest list for them, then call the papparazzi agencies and do the same thing. As part of the project, I created and wrote blogs for a few of the characters (Carma Brandon Crispin) and three years later still receive occasional comments or emails for these non-existent people. Of course this was all perfectly harmless, but it does show how easily it can be done.
As people of the year, it seems that we have great power. If I might quote Spiderman briefly, with that power comes great responsibility; let's not screw it up.
