Invisible Inkling: 10 obvious things about the future of newspapers you need to get through your head.
My favorite line: “Stop whining.”
Media Literacy Lesson: TripAdvisor
Sunday, June 3rd, 2007The Wall Street Journal does a service this weekend with “Deconstructing TripAdvisor,” a long article (unfortunately behind the newspaper’s pay-wall) that helps explain the popularity — and the flaws — of TripAdvisor, which for many people (including me)
has become a first stop for travel planning. Thanks in part to its prominence in Google searches, some 24 million visitors a month check out what other users have to say about where to stay, eat and play around the world. (In contrast, publisher Frommer’s sells 2.5 million guidebooks a year.) With more than 250,000 hotels, its sheer breadth of properties makes it more useful than other hotel Web sites. Its wide range of contributors — there are nearly 10 million reviews and opinions — make it more democratic.
“Democratic” doesn’t always mean that the crowd is perfectly wise, of course. While I find the reviews to be largely congruent with my own experiences, I keep a healthy skepticism about what I read.
The Journal reporter makes some key points, including the necessity to be wary of reviews that are either pure raves or utter slams. The latter can well be written by people who’ve had (maybe) rare bad experiences or by competitors, and the former can come from people affiliated with the property.
It’s a terrific article. It’s also a lesson in the evolving nature of media — and media literacy.
Benkler to Berkman, and the Role of a University
Yochai Benkler, the brilliant thinker about how modern collaborative tools are changing the economy and our lives in general, is coming to Harvard Law School and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, with which this center is affiliated (along with UC-Berkeley) and where I’m a research fellow. Benkler’s 2006 book, The Wealth of Networks, is probably the most important volume for understanding these changes.
I’m at Berkman today for the Internet & Society Conference 2007. The title this year is “University: Knowledge Beyond Authority,” and the theme is largely about how “open” — in all kinds of ways — the university (all universities, not just Harvard) should be in a Digital Age.
Today’s event is public. Yesterday was a smaller gathering of representatives from various constituencies — including academics, nonprofits, the “content” industry and others — to find at least some common ground. Under the rules of the day, I can’t say who said what.
There were indications that some people in the entertainment industry realize how counter-productive their restrictive copyright policies have been in key respects. Scholars are persistently thwarted in their attempts to make what by all accounts should be “fair use” of videos and other materials that “content holder,” as they’re known, lock down so powerfully to thwart infringement.
One suggestion, that universities should participate actively in policing alleged copyright infringement, was not viewed with much favor, it seemed to me, by anyone but the representatives of the entertainment industry.
No comments:
Post a Comment