elearnspace

Am I my brother's web 2.0 gatekeeper?

This is a slightly confusing and conflicted article - Am I my brother's web 2.0 gatekeeper?: "The thing is, there has always been too much information. That is to say, there has always been a great deal of bad information, or badly presented information, along with the good and the well done. So there has always been a role for the person who had the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff and the temerity to consign the chaff to oblivion...My point is that there is no need, nor has there ever been one, for “gatekeepers.” The information has been there, for anyone with the time and resolution to dig for it and learn to make sense of it."

I find myself agreeing with what the author is saying at stages - i.e. the importance of people (networks) to help make sense of the world . In other areas he ends up expressing points that I disagree with - such as the view that information has always been available. It may have been there, but barriers to access treat information as if it's not there for many members of society. I read a fair number of journal articles...but I don't link to them here. Unless you are a student of faculty member, you likely don't have access to many articles in academic journals. So is the information there? Of course it is. But it can't be accessed by a large portion of society. And that's the problem. Wikipedia, for example, is too often viewed from the perspective of "is it valid/truthful". That's not the real point. Wikipedia is accessible. It fits into the information habits of web users. Online, like it or not, access trumps authority. Educators need to understand that key distinction.