I just read a great post from Doris Egan (co-exec producer on House). It’s about the lack of authority out there — even from sources that are authoritative.

The full post is How Research Leads to Nihilism and it’s here: http://tightropegirl.livejournal.com/#10920

xJ

There’s been many times I’ve been at a bar or in line somewhere and overheard a funny piece of conversation and thought “that would work well in my script”. As long as the person saying it isn’t an aspiring writer themself, I don’t think there’s really any ethical issue with occasionally using ‘real life’ dialogue in your own work.

But what about if I’m online using a forum, or a blog, and I read an interesting comment or a funny anecdote? If I reproduce that in my script, am I guilty of plagiarism, or are anonymous online comments just the digital equivalent of overheard chatter in a bar?

I like you points and think you are doing a good job of covering writing the future.

While this is probably too late because you are delivering your speech tomorrow, I’m going to add to the topic. This may fall under the topic of exposure…what about the implications of making writing available globaly? Now your internet published content is available everywhere and to people that don’t even speak your language. Google has language translators available, but if you use an internet translator, does it accurately translate the message across? Does something get lost in the translation or changed?

Another touch point is that the rules of writing have become lost. Especially in email and blogs. People forget to use spell check. People don’t proofread anything. People make up abbreviations. They become lazy writers in informal electronic media and I think that this sometimes impacts them when they should be writing at their best.

Just a couple of thoughts.

Good luck and enjoy the experience. I’d love to pass wisdom on to my school.

Great post. Sounds like it’ll be a great speech. A couple of things I’d like to add:

1) It seems to me that the idea of ‘permanence’ has gained acceptance by the younger generation. Social networks like myspace and facebook have given online diaries a new power and it seems like nobody is ashamed of the things they did in their mispent youth. I think a shift has occurred where people are no longer ashamed of their little mistakes and are willing to admit they are flawed human beings who change over time. I can foresee a political ’scandal’ in the future where perhaps it is discovered that a political candidate posed naked or said something controversial about Muslims or something and is able to survive because people no longer expect their politicians to be perfect from childhood to adulthood.

2) Authority – This concept is moving away from established ‘experts’ towards more of a ‘track record’ approach. And this track record can come in many forms, from books, to magazines, to blogs, to vlogs. With the newfound permanence I spoke about above, it’s much easier to discover what a person has said on a subject before. Therefore, it’s also easier for each individual to judge for themselves whether they should regard a person as an authority or not.

For instance, I would be as willing to trust the opinion of an anonymous poster on a bulletin board with a track record of excellent posts as much as someone who has written a book on the subject, but doesn’t talk often about their ideas. While one may have a more reasoned opinion, honed through the publication of a book, the other has actively entered their ideas into the ‘marketplace of ideas’ and shaped their opion in the face of opposing viewpoints.

In another vein, Google has also reshaped what an authority is. A significant facor in their algorithm is how many sites link to a specific site. If others feel that the site is worth linking too, it is probably a worthwhile site in Google’s eyes. Google doesn’t (generally) care at all what the site says, what the author of the site has done before, or if leading lights in the industry recomend the site. It (mostly) only matters if others find the site interesting. In this way, the historical basis of what defines ‘authority’ is being re-written. I suppose it’s a bit of a ‘what have you done for me lately’ situation.

Anyway, my two cents.

It’s hard to imagine what the final arbiter of trust will be online. Currently, I think, we’re relying on quantitative statistics: number of RSS subscribers, number of Digg posts, numbers of readers, number of postive Amazon reviews, eBay feedback ratings, etc. On one level, these are a democratic way of seeing who has the most interesting, and by extension, most trustworthy things to say. For arguments sake, let’s just assume that a site or blog with high readership did not get that way because of blatant lies and misrepresentations of truth.

On the other hand, popularity most often has little to do with truth, quality, or integrity. We could exhaust ourselves on citing examples of this truth.

I, too, am an optimist and think that these early, early days of the Internet and citizen journalism will go though many growing pains until we all finally come to a group consensus on wait the basis of online trust is. I think it will be a combination of quantitative numbers and some perhaps as yet uninvented independent ratings systems for all user generated content on the Web.

Isn’t that wonderful!

In the bad old days, our teachers used books as sources – and believed that if it was printed, it was very likely to be true.

You know what? It seems that much of what I learned in school is totally false. I was taught using books that claimed that Ben Franklin’s kite was struck by lightening. Yep – totally false.

We even had pictures in our science books showing that rainbows had seven distinct colours, and a diagram tracing the light through raindrops showing how they were formed. The only problem was that for the diagram to work, you had to be facing the sun to see the rainbow.

Did it matter to the science teacher that we couldn’t see seven distinct colours, or that rainbows always seemed to appear with the sun behind us ? Of course not – a printed book trumped thought and observations.

Thankfully we are now in this brave new world were anyone can easily created a POD printed book or a webpage. Now the simple fact that it is printed or seen isn’t enough to give it instant credibility.

We’ve all heard of the study that demonstrated Wikipedia had an average of 4 errors per article. The sad thing is that the same study found about 3 errors per article in Encyclopedia Brittanica.

So it isn’t a case that we now need to think and evaluate our sources. We’ve always had to. The only difference is that now we know we need to – instead of living in ignorance.

Mac