Throughout the first couple weeks of this class, we've covered quite an interesting span of topics. I have to say, I never really thought that "information" as a topic of discussion could honestly cover so many things and have so much depth to it. I always thought of information as just, well, information. It just is. But there's a whole lot more to it than that.
I think one of the biggest takeaways from these first couple of weeks on this topic is the idea of Participatory Culture that Jenkins talked about. The idea that our new world of Web 2.0 affords us a social platform, that is, the internet, where all the people online can come together to author, edit, and participate in the formation of information is at the heart of many of the different articles and topics we've covered thus far. For example, take last week's discourse on Wikipedia, and the successes and failures that encompass it. While Wikipedia is certainly not a site that allows for just anyone to put in their two cents about any topic they want, at its core, the website is a machine driven by the concept of Participatory Culture. Users author the information, others police the site, looking for faults and issues, and while the site requires sufficient backup to claims and edits, the entire user base is, for the most part, free to edit Wikipedia in whatever manner they choose.
This idea is also at the core of the missing iPhone scandal that Shirkey wrote about, as well as Jenkins' idea of Convergence. With the help of the limitless user base of our online world, the small website about a missing phone spread like wildfire, jumping not only around the internet, but eventually landing in more "real world" venues like the news, and eventually led to a complete change in the way that the case, something completely separate from the internet, was handled by the NYPD.
In essence, I would argue that the most important thing we've covered so far in these first few weeks is Jenkins' work. His ideas, minus the Black Box Fallacy perhaps, are at the core of every investigation into information we've delved into thus far, and they provide us with some excellent fundamental tools for analyzing the information superhighway that the web has presented us with, and continues to expand upon. I anticipate that these theories will continue to be relevant throughout the rest of this class, though I look forward to seeing them expanded upon by future authors.
