Digital Common Sense

First, here I am at a time when I’m taking a break. I’m writing this because sometimes things should be said, and I haven’t seen anyone else say it.

To the Internet readers at large, this is my opinion. Please form your own. Express it freely. That is what the Internet, and blogging in particular is all about. If what you read makes you think we are suddenly friends, or that we are suddenly foes, you are wrong.

For those of you who will inevitably read this as malicious and spiteful, it is not. It’s straightforward, from the hip. It is my opinion written freely by choice. If you don’t like my opinion or my choice, go construct your own.

This is however, something I feel strongly about, so mainstream media, listen up. Robert Scoble does not speak for me when you talk with him. He doesn’t speak for a lot of us on the Internet. He doesn’t speak for a lot of us writing blogs. I’ll go so far as to say I do not think Robert speaks for the majority of bloggers who make up whatever absurd total Technorati claims to be tracking at this moment.

Robert and I are what I would call ephemeral connections. We have never met or spoken. We have traded email. As a person, I like Robert. I think he’d make a helluva next door neighbor most of the time. But I disagree with much of what he says. I disagree sometimes because of different values, and sometimes because of technical inaccuracies.

Robert has an enormous ego. His actual knowledge and understanding of the technologies is not as large. To his credit, sometimes, if you verbally make enough noise, Robert will revisit his thinking. Sometimes he admits when he’s wrong. Not always, but none of us do. Robert is, like all of us, human. He is not the Golden Child here to save the Internet, and is sometimes revered far beyond his due.

While he makes excellent fodder for traditional media sound bites, he does not speak for us. And when you go back to him for his opinion repeatedly, you perpetuate our greatest fear - that you, the traditional media, don’t have a clue.

There is no person who can answer your questions and give you the right answer. There are no right answers. I’d say this if you were giving too much attention to someone like Doc Searls or David Weinberger. Both are also passing connections over a number of years. They are all intelligent, even wise people. But just as Naked Conversations contained errors and mis-statements, so did the Cluetrain Manifesto. They are human, and they only have their own opinion or some subset of facts that they researched. None of us have all the facts about anything.

Remember, it’s the Internet. It isn’t based in fact to begin with. I’ll make up a stat here and say I believe that 90% of what you can find on the Internet is opinion. Or what the advertiser will call user generated content. Anyone can write anything on the Internet. Just because you read it there doesn’t make it fact. And just because you talk to someone who writes opinions there doesn’t make it fact either.

I urge you, the mainstream media, the ones who constantly beat up on bloggers about our informal place in the world as opposed to your journalistic integrity and standards, please follow those standards and demonstrate that integrity when you write about us.

Don’t talk to Robert, or Doc, or David, or me and think you have anything but one person’s opinion. Not unless we can back up a statement with factual scholarly research material. We are expressing our opinions and you too often treat them as fact. The are not.

Please seek out dissenting opinions from reputable sources. They are many. And easily found. We are not a shy bunch.

Update Sunday 12:10am - If Robert’s not spoofing for April Fools, you boneheads are going to put him on CNN on Monday. WTF is wrong with you morons in traditional mainstream media. You really are clueless, aren’t you?

Technorati Tags: Memo to the mainstream media

Filed by Ken at 6:26 pm under General, Technology