Chris Dahlen at Pitchfork Media observes that many Web 2.0 sites with their ability for people to post and share their own information and content fuels more conversation and debate about pop culture then real life?
Like most of you reading this, I know far more about the people and places of the Star Wars universe than of Africa. Even though Star Wars is a movie, and Africa is the second-largest continent on Earth and the birthplace of mankind, I spend roughly nada time thinking about the latter, while the former has shaped my life since I was four.
Many of the participants of these Web 2.0 sites are more involved in an imaginary world then the real world?¬ It’s more about marketing and pop culture then real conversations about real events.¬ Dahlen states that in Wikipedia there is more information on Star Wars then Africa (main articles:¬ 8,400 to 7,500 words respectively) and a search on YouTube¬ gives you a wealth of video’s from and about Star Wars, but the first item returned about Africa is the song by Toto.
“My last three years living back in the U.S. really brought home to me just how unreal the rest of the world seems to most Americans.” So blogged journalist Rebecca MacKinnon, in reference to the major U.S. newspapers who are cutting their foreign bureaus– and leaving the task of reporting world news to the internet.
But is the internet up to the challenge? All in all, you can find more Star Wars fans and more sci-fi content on the internet than material on Africa. This is partly because sci-fi nerds in the Western world have better net access than most Africans. People also seem more drawn to the relative simplicity of pop culture than to the complexities of real life. Pop culture gives us a world we can understand, and problems we can solve. Or as Ethan Zuckerman told me, “If you’re writing ‘Buffy ’ fan fic, you may not know the name of the third junior subvampire who showed up for one episode in season four. But someone does, and you can authoriatatively build the Buffy index on Wikipedia.” By contrast, “We don’t know authoriatatively who’s in the Union of Islamic Courts. And we probably never will.”
This brings up the question of a social responsibility aspect of Web 2.0. The dumbing down of the American Education System is often spoken of,¬ but perhaps parts of Web 2.0, in it’s own way, is contributing to an even larger problem, the dumbing down of our culture and social awareness.
Read the rest of Chris Dahlen’s article where he speaks of the role of the personal blogger.
Other related links:
Brainreactions – Web 2.0 and social responsibility – Mark Supanich
Technorati Tags: blogging, pop culture, youtube, web 2.0, wikipedia