Improving the Online Signal to Noise Ratio: Rumors of the Internet-driven Death of Culture are Highly Exaggerated

I first learned about signal to noise ratio when I was back in engineering school.  I decided to pursue an electrical engineering education through my love of music, which manifest itself in years of piano lessons and a fascination with top-of-the-line audio gear.

I learned that in recorded music, "signal" is the part you want to hear, and noise is all the other unintended stuff.  In the days of vinyl records and magnetic audio tape this generally meant background hiss, and the snap crackle and pop sounds caused by record scratches.   In audio technology, the goal was always to boost signal and reduce noise, or improve S / N, ratio hence the introduction of Dolby and DBX noise reduction systems.

I thought of this while reading an ironic post on the AlwaysOn blog. It is ironic because the author contributes to the very issue he rants about - excessive online noise and shrill opinion.  Moreover he voices his opinions through the very medium that he complains about.

In an AlwaysOn blog post titled: "Mindles Crap: Blogs, Vlogs, etc." David Scott Lewis writes about a NY Times article that references a book in which the author deplores the user generated content and blogging crazes and blames these trends on nothing less than "killing our culture."

I tend not to be a flamer but this was too good to resist, and were the information from less reputable sources I would probably let it go.

Scott Lewis writes:

It's a great article and guaranteed to raise the blood pressure of many Web 2.0 / Second Life / Digg /YouTube /Twitter /MySpace / Facebook / StumbleUpon Jihadists -- the fanatics and extremists and self-anointed elitists of everything Web 2.0.  "Fools" would be an appropriate synonym.

The article in the Times is titled, "The Cult of the Amateur" and is based upon the  book by Andrew Keen with the same name and with the sub-title, "How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture."

I don't consider myself a "Web 2.0 Jihadist," although as a communications professional I am intrigued by the implications and effects (both positive and negative) of Web 2.0 on public discourse and information.

Scott Lewis continues:

Mr. Keen argues that “what the Web 2.0 revolution is really delivering is superficial observations of the world around us rather than deep analysis, shrill opinion rather than considered judgment.”  This is what happens, he suggests, “when ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule.”

For one thing, Mr. Keen says, “history has proven that the crowd is not often very wise,” embracing unwise ideas like “slavery, infanticide, George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, Britney Spears.” The crowd created the tech bubble of the 1990s, just as it created the disastrous Tulipmania that swept the Netherlands in the 17th century.

Uh, OK - so we sometimes get it wrong.  The folly of crowds is the flip side of the wisdom of crowds. However tulip mania was hundreds of years ago and the dot bomb preceded Web 2.0. I am really not sure what he is trying to say here. Why not argue against democracy itself?  Scott Lewis derides "self appointed elitists" but this passage smacks of elitism. It seems obviously slanted to favor the heretofore information gatekeepers, e.g. research organizations, historians and MSM.

Although crowds are not always necessarily wiser, Web 2.0 gives us more dots to connect, by empowering almost anyone to contribute to a topic, and more people to participate in connecting the dots. In this way it can perhaps even mitigate mob mentality and bubbles.

Because Web 2.0 celebrates the “noble amateur” over the expert, and because many search engines and Web sites tout popularity rather than reliability, Mr. Keen notes, it’s easy for misinformation and rumors to proliferate in cyberspace.

Disinformation is the flip side of freeing up information flow. Would Scott Lewis and Keen prefer to put the lid on free and easy exchange of info? All but the densest of us – e.g. the ones who actually respond to email Spam – know that you must consider the source, not just on the Web but especially there.

People turn to those whose opinions and information they have learned to trust and respect, even if not among the traditional information gatekeepers. And the better search engines, certainly Google included, factor credibility in their rankings. Other sites, like TechMeme do a good job of filtering out the noise.

For that matter, as Mr. Keen points out, the idea of objectivity is becoming increasingly passé in the relativistic realm of the Web, where bloggers cherry-pick information and promote speculation and spin as fact. Whereas historians and journalists traditionally strived to deliver the best available truth possible, many bloggers revel in their own subjectivity, and many Web 2.0 users simply use the Net, in Mr. Keen’s words, to confirm their “own partisan views and link to others with the same ideologies.

This is an absolute hoot and I am not sure if Scott Lewis / Keen are being serious here.  It seems like the point is that history and journalism were the bastions of pristine and unbiased information before the blogosphere came along.

True, the new world of unmediated media sometimes throws off more heat than light, and ill- informed opinions can see the light of day and occasionally dominate debate.

At the same time, let’s not forget the potential of these new tools to "out" misinformed posers and enable debate, collaboration, and the furtherance of discussion and evolution of ideas.

The rest is a bit rambling as Lewis expands on his analysis of the Keen and NY Times piece with some additional  own ideas. And here we actually find some common ground.

I started this post with a discussion of S / N ratios and an interesting area that is ripe for further development is how to boost the S / N ratio on the Web.  How do we filter out the noise, evaluate information, and a source’s reputation and credibility?

Scott discusses some of the techniques used by scholarly research databases, for example ISI's Web of Science makes it possible to consider the influence and credibility of a source by allowing users to track and analyze author citation histories (I mentioned this in my post Power Searching for PR Professionals). There are some other ideas worth consideration presented as well.

And then there are times when, absolutely, you just need to put that mouse down and go and get a professional opinion. David Carr relates in a June NY Times piece (Call the Doctor) in a much less bombastic way his own experiences with illness, and how in trying to do some research about a controversial drug online, threw in the towel and went back to his doctors, because he found "everything, except insight" online.  He closes: "This Wednesday, I will see my endocrinologist. We will chat for a few minutes... and no doubt he'll smile when I entertain him with all that I have learned on the Web. Then after he tells me what he thinks, I will follow my doctor's order."

 

Comments

[David Scott Lewis]

I guess my post/column raised YOUR blood pressure, as I thought it might for the "We, the Media" crowd -- more often than not the media equivalents of Islamists. BTW, you must be new to my columns since I NEVER use "Scott Lewis", but use my full name because there are way too many named "David Lewis." Not a big deal; just pointing this out.

Yes, I agree with the irony of complaining about blogs on a blog; alas, the beauty of blogging. Also, I have certain rights on the AlwaysOn Network since I publish their "Letter from China" column, so I'm considered by them as a "network blogger" (ITRW, a "columnist"). And there's also a chance that the post will make it into an issue of their printed magazine -- hence, going beyond the blogosphere (but I'm going into too many specifics regarding how AO works).

I take exception that there was a lot of noise in the piece and related discussion thread. There are a lot of thoughtful opinions expressed in the discussion, which is what I wanted. You would know from my other AO or Sand Hill Group columns that one of my key purposes is to generate discourse, and, for the most part, my "Letter from China" columns have received more comments per column/post than perhaps any other "network blogger." And that's the way I want it, especially when it comes to a topic like China where the disconnect between the importance of a country and knowledge of the same country is the widest gap among all countries. Let's face it, the two most important countries of this century: The United States and China. Yet, what Americans know about China is almost nil. Both a problem and opportunity (especially for those of us Americans crazy enough to live here, sans the the multitude of English teachers who learn very little about how China really works).

I'll stick by my "idiocy of the crowds" versus "wisdom of the crowds" remark. This is one reason that I don't support democracy in China, at least not yet (or at least not until 2012, after the Hu/Wen era is over). And does connecting the dots really prevent mob mentality? The jury is out on this. Look at how the Jihadists -- the real ones -- are using it for recruiting and the like. Is this a good thing? Are Americans just smarter, not stupid enough to fall for the same crap? Maybe, but maybe not.

You claim that Google factors in credibility. Perhaps they do, but if so, Wikipedia shouldn't do nearly as well in Google search results since Wikipedia is hardly a reliable source. (As "a" source, it's fine. But as an "only" source, well, that's a dangerous situation.) And although I like TechMeme, I hardly consider it unbiased. But this plays to the current meme on the death of the A-list.

Regarding the wisdom of the crowd to root out misinformed posters, this may sometimes happen. But this assumes that it's important enough to someone to take the time to respond. We all know that most are lurkers, so falsehoods could easily remain unchallenged.

But, in the final analysis, we may be in agreement, at least on my key point: Search has a long way to go, needs a lot of improvement. If 50,000,000+ blogs post a lot of crap, that's fine with me. (It's not fine with Keen.) My point: I just want to make sure that we can sift through the crap, to improve the signal-to-noise ration. And on this point, I believe we agree.

[Bob Geller]

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my post, and for clarifying some of the points and issues.

Despite my grousing, it is an important topic that you wrote about, and I am sure we would find more areas of agreement than disagreement.