Sauerberg: Yes, but if you take a look at things before the parentheses, people had to keep all those things in their heads. Within the parenthesis, you have books, you can put all of your memories up on shelves. It was easily recognizable and accessible and you know exactly where it is on the shelf. Now you put everything into the computer. I’ve spent most of this morning looking for exact texts from seven years ago, that I hope to be able to recycle and find them. They are somewhere in there. I have to use my own head as the sort of control and I find that, increasingly so, that I have to keep a personal touch on what I need because I cannot rely on the computer because everything goes into it. It’s far too plentiful.
DS: But isn’t the reason that Google is the largest corporation in the face of the earth precisely because of its ability to perform searches just like the one you’re talking about and if you couldn’t find it, someone with a greater technical expertise could? And we’re talking about authority at this point.
Sauerberg: But I need to know what to look for exactly, which means I would have to use my head in the first place.
DS: I wish I could be as comfortable that everything we’re doing now. For instance, this machine [the voice recorder], it changes the whole story, right? Say this was a live feed…
Pettitt: We’d have to worry about it for about four years.
DS: You’d have to worry about it for at least four years.
Pettitt: Yeah, and then after that it would disappear. There’d be so much stuff around, it would disappear. Google only goes for the stuff with plenty of links. Or all the links would be broken.
Sauerberg: That we would have to rely on memory.
Pettitt: And we would claim that it’s been manipulated. That’s the other point.
DS: And so you’re rejecting the idea of the Internet as a container?
Pettitt: Yes, I do. It’s a network.
DS: And the computer file is not a container?
"I expect citizens would tend to rely on the most legitimate public officials for news, trusting especially what the White House sent their way."
So the folks at CJR would rely on President Bush's word? And Rush Limbaugh's listeners' Obama's?
People will listen to what they want to hear - those who already agree with them. The Balkinization of opinion will continue, and likely worsen. Legitimacy is irrelevant, and those caught making false statements - like Dan Rather - are held up as heroes.
There is literally not a single news source, right or left, that is trustworthy today. It's all about enforcing The Narrative. Perhaps we are all Homer after all?
#1 Posted by Jayat, CJR on Sat 8 Jun 2013 at 09:56 AM
This is nonsense on stilts. It's as if nothing happened before about 900 CE. The only reference to an earlier period is to Homer. In the ancient west alone, how about: public inscriptions of laws and edicts on stone, with punishments prescribed for anyone who moved or defaced them; private inscriptions, such as curses, on metal (ever heard the phrase 'aere perennius'?); the disputes about the authentic and correct texts of the dramatists, Homer, etc. amongst grammarians from the 3rd c. BCE, of those of the founders of the school amongst Epicureans from the 2nd c. BCE, and of those of Plato and Aristotle amongst Academics & Peripatetics from the 2nd c. CE; Galen's complaints in the 2nd c. CE that people were circulating early works of his without his permission, and works not his under his name; and the vast numbers of papyri that have survived, preserving everything from private letters to New Comedy (and Epicurus). We even have writing tablets from Vindolanda. The "orality" of ancient Greek culture and the transition to literacy has been a topos for decades. (This is off the top of my head, by the way. Nothing fancy.) On the other hand, early printed editions of books often present very different texts. The number of "ephemeral" political pamphlets produced in Britain from the 17th c. on is staggering. In short, these authors seem to be peddlng a piece of fiction; so it's probably appropriate that its title would assign it to the Ludlum Corpus.
#2 Posted by Cat, CJR on Sat 8 Jun 2013 at 02:04 PM