June 14, 2007
'Everyone's Tripping and It's All Free'
Michael Gorman, the former president of the American Library Association, seldom holds his tongue when there’s a discussion to be had on information technology: He has argued that Google’s library-scanning project “atomizes” books, and he has criticized Wikipedia for its open-editing policy.
Now, in two posts on Britannica Blog, Mr. Gorman has launched a broadside against all of “Web 2.0,” a term applied to a range of Web sites that encourage interaction and collaborative work. “The life of the mind in the age of Web 2.0 suffers,” he writes, “from an increase in credulity and an associated flight from expertise.”
It’s an argument that has been made before — by Mr. Gorman and by computer scientists like Jaron Lanier, who worried in a much-discussed essay about “a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise.” But Mr. Gorman now makes his case with unique ferocity. Calling upon Mr. Lanier’s notion of “digital Maoism,” he depicts Web 2.0 as “an unholy brew made up of the digital utopianism that hailed the Internet as the second coming of Haight-Ashbury — everyone’s tripping and it’s all free.”
Blogs, news aggregators, and the like have allowed Web users to proclaim themselves “citizen journalists,” writes Mr. Gorman, and they have also encouraged Netizens to scoff at traditional scholarship. “Publishers, developers of publishing projects, editors, fact-checkers, proofreaders, and the other people necessary to the publication of authoritative texts are all mustache-twirling villains to the digital collectivist,” the librarian says.
Academic bloggers have savaged Mr. Gorman’s treatises, arguing that his faith in expertise is naive and that the “digital collectivists” he describes are straw men. A question for scholars: Do you have the sense that Wikipedians, “citizen journalists,” and other Web 2.0 enthusiasts seek to devalue your published work? —Brock Read
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The question posed as the last sentence is irrelevant. Intention (do “enthusiasts seek to devalue your published work”) has nothing to do with the tendencies that new technical forms foster.
— Dennis Sepper Jun 15, 06:43 AM #
Michael is too old to qualify to have an opinion about this. Old people’s brains (like his and mine) are wired differently from those of young people’s. Old people may know better, but so what? The marketplace decides everything, including the future of information and the role of libraries. Web 2.0 is over anyway: it has been tossed in the corner like dirty undershorts. It’s on to web 3.0.
— Philip J Tramdack Jun 15, 07:28 AM #
I am a librarian, and I think there is still a place for libraries and librarians in the future, though this will not usually look like the stacks, catalogs and study carrels of before. Libraries are increasingly digital realms, with little or no physical place. I work at such a library. My key duties are providing materials patrons can access remotely, research and reference, or simply providing whole answers. These are paramount services in my library, and I think this will be true of many libraries in the near future. I also embrace and use tools such as Google and Wikipedia. There are good, credible uses for these and it is up to librarians to show patrons how to best use these tools, not to condemn them. Gorman and his ilk have scared young, forward-thinking librarians such as me away from ALA and toward other professional associations. I want to collaborate with other librarians who share similar visions of the future, and don’t rail against inevitable changes. These rants serve only to depress popular opinion of librarians, and embarass those who do not feel as Mr. Gorman does. He is not speaking for me.
— Emily Jun 15, 09:40 AM #
Gorman’s articles in Britannica have been pretty thoroughly savaged throughout the Academic Librarian blogging community, and for good reason. I don’t know any academic librarians he speaks for at this point.
— Jason Griffey Jun 15, 09:55 AM #
For those of us who aren’t in “academia,” it’s worth noting that Gorman doesn’t speak for us either.
— K.G. Schneider Jun 15, 10:03 AM #
Forget all the dead old people: Aristotle, Panizzi, and Ranganathan! I get all I need from Web-versions of Jon Stewart, Howard Stern and the New York Post. When that old-fashion bun-head librarian, Gorman, stops “shushing” everyone and dies I’ll forget him too.
— Just Kidding Jun 15, 10:35 AM #
There is some value to what Gorman says. I have an 18 yr old. Many teens have the view “If it is on the net it is true.” & yet their myspace.com is full of lies, wished for status, & acts of rebellion (drinking, drugs, etc). Their BS detectors are not yet fully functional from a parental view, but there are, in some areas, levels of sophistication unheard of in my generation. They are reshaping how society functions. (gossip is still rife, it just spreads via txt msg during class rather than passed notes.) They do value authoritative works, they just don’t believe it has to come from an establishment controlled media. This is not all that different than the hippies. We distrusted anyone over 30 or from the establishment & parents. Communication happens at a much faster pace, & the younger generation is keeping up & shaping the communication. My grandmother retired rather than have to learn to do bookkeeping on a mainframe. It is going to take us “old guys” longer to adjust and master (or even like) the new technologies. Typewriters are not totally gone & paper books won’t be either. (SF lit indicates that books will have extra special value as things go ever more digital.) Our current values will be adopted in modified form by the younger generation, just as we from the hippy era became establishment & blended our radical (& often disrespectful attitudes) views with the old to make the current reality.
— J Mueller-Alexander Jun 15, 10:42 AM #
Uh, is this guy irony-challenged? He’s distributing his screed against Web 2.0 ON A BLOG!
— DG Jun 15, 11:30 AM #
That is too funny, DG.
— Safety Neal Jun 15, 11:40 AM #
Like Mueller-Alexander I have an 18 year old. I don’t think he has any problem at all with the “if it is on the net it’s true” error, since he’ll search the web for multiple opinions. I think he has a bit more of a danger of uncritically accepting “if it’s in Habermas it is true” (he’s spending the summer reading 20th C philosophy) since it’s more work to find alternative interpretations and critiques of such materials.
Overall, I’d say that he and his classmates are taking advantage of the heterogeneity of opinions available in the blogosphere, and as a result are better able to challenge “authoritative works” than my generation was. But then, I’ve never been much of a fan of editors.
By the way, my son tells me that I ought to read Habermas and Foucault myself before I click “submit” on this topic. I won’t, though at least Habermas’s comments about web 2.0 are on the web.
— JQ Johnson Jun 15, 12:59 PM #
If anything all of the latest open access to web publications has only raised the bar for traditional publications to not only provide important groundbreaking research but to present it in a manner which is accessible to the average layperson or to at least offer companion pieces that attempt to do so. Dumbing down this is not, as most academic writing is simply poorly done and for those outside of the field of study in question nothing more than a unsolvable rubrics cube. Mr. Gorman’s energies would be far better put to use in helping his colleagues learn to write.
— Malcolm Furgol Jun 15, 01:07 PM #
The internet is far too young to be the subject of oracular pronouncements of any kind. Our guideline should be: information-sharing is good.
— David McCullough Jun 15, 01:17 PM #
As an academic librarian, I have watched with great enthusiasm as libraries incorporate various “Web 2.0” tools into their websites and catalogs to reach out to users. This includes allowing comments about items in the catalog, or tagging in addition to LC Subject Headings. There’s also a very large library presence in Facebook and Second Life. Personally I feel that it’s important for librarians to reach out to users by participating in some of the communities where they’re already spending most of their time online.
— Andy Morton Jun 15, 01:52 PM #