Ted Stevens has referred to the Internet as a “series of tubes”

All around the Internet, people write. Whether it’s blogs, wikis, message boards, mailing lists, emails, instant messages, or Internet Relay Chat (IRC), millions of messages are composed and transmitted every day through the series of tubes we call the Internet.

Larry Sanger asked whether the Internet is for “communication and socialization” or “finding information”. He gave a speech on this topic, but as far as I know he has never released the paper. From the preview he released, I think it is an interesting topic, so I’m going to examine it myself. I think it’s quite clear the Internet is for communication, and that “finding information” is merely one reason that people communicate through the Internet. Perhaps I have a broader definition of “communication” than Sanger, though. The definition I was forced to memorize in my high school Communications class has always stuck in my mind: “Communication is the accurate transfer of information from sender to receiver.” Going from that definition, it is quite clear that the Internet was built specifically for the purpose of communication, and that communication is, on a very fundamental level, the sole activity for which the Internet can be used. But with that out of the way, I think there is more to this topic than this simplistic binary answer, which probably misunderstands the question in the first place.

RFC 1149 describes a standard for Internet communication using avian carriers

Sanger says on his blog that “communication produces lots of information of great value and interest to the conversationalists but of almost no value to anyone else.” I assume by “the conversationalists” he’s referring solely to the active participants in the communication — the people writing in addition to reading. And after a bit of thought I’d guess that by “communication” he’s referring to what I’ll call “discussion” — a particular type of communication in which more than one person is an independent active participant.

Third parties can often benefit from a discussion between others

So one question, which I have rephrased for the sake of my own understanding, is the validity of this: “discussion produces lots of information of great value and interest to the active participants but of almost no value to anyone else”. Even after refinement, I think this statement greatly overstates the truth of the matter. Yes, the primary purpose of most discussions (but not all discussions — consider a public debate, for instance) is to provide information to the active participants, but there is quite often much information produced which is of benefit to third parties to the discussion. This is especially true on the Internet, where even an esoteric discussion which only a handful of people in the world would be interested in, can potentially be accessed by that portion of that handful who were not active participants in the discussion.

So what about content which is not a discussion? I’m going to ignore professionally produced content (by which I mean simply content produced for monetary profit), since the purpose of professional writing has been well-studied and in my opinion mostly solved. But I’m not going to take the position of those who claim that there’s necessarily something wrong with amateur content. I’ll keep an open mind and leave that as a possibility, but there seems to be more to it than that.

Once you have eliminated discussions and professionally produced content, what’s left? Blogs generally fall under the category of “discussions”, as do most wikis under the definition given above. Remaining would be blogs which do not allow comments, most Google Knol articles, and various other solo creations and collaborations in which participants are not “independent”. Arguably, Citizendium would fall under this latter category, at least that seems to be what they are trying to create.

Beware of anyone pushing an agenda

A separate but related question is what is the main purpose of the author. In terms of content produced for discussion, the purpose is generally to learn or to teach — to ask questions or to answer them. In a good discussion these two purposes are not mutually exclusive. In fact, when the participants are all amateurs, it’s best to be wary of someone who is participating solely to teach and not at all to learn — they clearly have an agenda to push.

So what about “one-way content” — content which is not part of a discussion? It’s tempting to say that the purpose of creating such content is necessarily to teach. It’s tempting to claim, for instance, that “if nobody reads what you write, there is no point writing it”. I quite firmly disagree with this statement, though. There can be tremendous value to writing something which no one reads. This is true not only of fiction (which I won’t discuss), but also of non-fiction. As an example, I need go no further than this very article. Not only have I gotten tremendous value out of writing it, that value is the primary purpose for which I have written it. True, I may get more value out of it if people respond to it, and this is only possible if people read it, but this is extra — a bonus which I don’t even require in exchange for the effort.

True honesty requires ignoring the unjustified opinions of others, but it also requires a commitment to excellence for oneself

While doing research for this article I came across a good discussion on Poynter Online (which I found through a link on calacanis.com). It reproduces a quote from Dave Winer who points out that “the root of the word amateur is love, and someone who does something for love is an amateur.” Perhaps this suggests a third purpose for content production — love of the subject, but really I don’t think so. Even when writing about a topic that one loves, I still think a key aspect of writing is the process of learning while producing the work. And I’d still recommend being wary of someone (professional or amateur) who writes solely for the sake of their audience. Amy Gahran, who wrote that article for Poynter, says that “often traditional journalists object that when unpaid amateurs do journalism for love and not for money, they’re prone to violating the core journalistic tenets of objectivity and avoiding conflicts of interests.” I think that’s a tendency, but I don’t think it’s inescapable. Furthermore, it’s probably as much a tendency among professionals as it is among amateurs. Integrity comes from writing for yourself, and not for your audience, and there is just as much temptation to write for your audience as a professional as there is as an amateur (I’ve considered writing “almost as much” and “even more of”, but I think “just as much” fits best). Ultimately, only an author can judge whether or not his or her work was truly honest (in a sense beyond merely factually correct), so only by making oneself the sole arbiter of success can 100% honesty be part of the goal.

So above all, think for yourself

Finally, I’d like to return to the point that one can learn even from writing about a topic one loves. I think there does come a point when one’s knowledge of a topic is so saturated that the return from writing about it is minimal. And there are some people — at least some — that are going to demand some sort of payment at this point. And I’d say, perhaps controversially, that there’s nothing at all wrong with that. So there is, I would say, a limitation to amateur content — at least to some extent, in some fields. But there’s a lot of room for mutual benefit when people node what they don’t know.

Image credits:

• about:internets by flickr user belpo, CC-BY-NC
• Just Before Release by flickr user pacunurse05, CC-BY-NC-ND
• Curiosity killed the cat by flickr user loungerie, CC-BY-NC
• Anti-scientology T-shirt by Operation Clambake, presumably copyrighted, used without permission under the doctrine of fair use
• Bernard Madoff by unknown U.S. Department of Justice employee, public domain
• The Thinker, photo by flickr user chrisinphilly5448, CC-BY-NC