DIGITAZING MANAGEMENT

When 'you' have the whole world in your hands

PING NA THALANG

The first time I heard that Time magazine had named You as the Person of The Year, in its January 1 issue, I felt that the managing editor Richard Stengel had gone over the top. But when you think about the reasoning behind the choice, it was quite logical.

Everywhere we look it is becoming clear that ICT-enabled common folk are taking over the information world. The ramifications of this will be unprecedented and unpredictable.

What we are seeing here is the online phenomenon that challenges the well-entrenched wisdom of having a middle-person as a go-between in conventional information distribution.

Now, information can be gathered directly at the source and immediately available for the consumers to see and hear - without the middle person - thanks to the World Wide Web and its worldwide reach via pervasive PCs and digital devices, both stationary and mobile.

This simple power of bypassing the central body offers an interesting impact. For generations, the communication and information distribution of our societies has been censored by central bodies. For example, we have newspaper and magazine editors to determine what is news or newsworthy. Writers need publishing houses to determine what stories deserve to be published. Songwriters, singers and bands have to conduct business via the record producers to have their music distributed.

Today, we have sites like YouTube, MySpace and so on to channel multimedia information straight from your camcorder (or smartphone) directly to the world. Wikipedia leads the way as an almost instantaneous, DIY encyclopedia. Countless blogs carry private messages from individuals to the public. Book publishing sites like Blurb or Lulu have also jumped on the bandwagon and allow people to self-publish bookstore-quality books and sell directly via the Internet.

These sites and others allow people to have billions of eyes and ears to see and hear things from all over the world. More importantly, it allows us to have millions of mouths to shout our messages to the world.

So, with common folk controlling the information age, is this the ultimate form of democracy? Maybe. But there's one danger lurking behind this new found power and that is the abuse of information. Direct information is a double-edged sword - being instantaneous and uncontrolled means the information via the web can be both used to educate or to harm, depending what motive the information provider has.

Controlled sites will still have a place in cyberspace to add credibility to the content, but there will be more direct channels via blogs and other uncontrolled sites that force consumers to exercise their own heavy dose of analysis.

One thing is for sure: the future generation will be swamped by the enormous load of both controlled and uncontrolled information. It may bring with it a new kind of chaos if consumed poorly, but to be fair, just as the physical world houses people with a variety of characters and traits, so does cyberspace. While the web generation has advantages over older folk, they also have to work harder when it comes to information analysis.

Bangkok Post
Wednesday January 31, 2007