The Change in Today's Virtual News
by Paul McGoldrick
If you have eaten a meal with me in the last three years and have raised the subject of "news" and the ability of people to make up their own minds, then you have probably already heard this tale. If you have not, read on…
We are going, I believe, through a major shift in the way that knowledge is distributed throughout humanity. But this is not a new phenomenon. Such changes have happened in the past and they will happen again in the future -- but when you live through such changes you tend to neglect them, or deny them, or hang on to the past as a crutch. As an example we can travel back nearly 500 years to the time of Henry VIII, the Catholic Church and Sir/St. Thomas More.
Thomas was born with the ultimate silver spoon in his mouth. The son of a senior judge, he was born in London in 1478 and was educated well in both London and then Oxford. He was a lawyer by profession and a family man by love. Before he was imprisoned in the Tower of London and executed 14 months later, in 1535, for refusing to swear the Oath of Supremacy to the King he was the second-most powerful man in England -- as Lord Chancellor.
More was regarded by the Vatican as the principal defender of the Catholic church in England and he was allowed to read tracts and texts that had been imported from Europe and which were on the "Index" of books that Catholics were prohibited from reading; he was given such permission so that he could write criticisms of these works, to show how they were flawed in faith or interpretation.
This was all happening during a time when another major change was taking place in the Church. Through the 15th Century the only people who could read the very few copies of the Bible to exist were those who understood Latin; that was a very limited segment of the population and it was completely within the whim of a priest to stand in the pulpit and tell his parishioners whatever he wanted about the Bible and its meanings. Suddenly things changed. The printing press began to produce copies of the Bible in volume: Students at the major colleges in England were now able to get hold of copies and make their own interpretations. Then something even worse happened -- for the Church -- as Bibles translated into English began to be imported from Europe. Now anybody who could read could also interpret the text as he/she wanted.
The Church, in the way that it has consistently tried to oppose change, resisted by applying fear to its congregations. It couldn't, and didn't, work.
What has that got to do with today? When you look at how technology news has been distributed in the last decades you have to understand the process of publication. When a company sends a print editor a press release that person decides what is going to be "used" or discarded. Invariably, a published story becomes just a re-hashed version of that release with, perhaps, some added commentary gleaned from telephone briefings. The editor rarely adds to that release with any real value, but it somehow becomes a legitimate story because it is in print. Features vary in their value, depending on the technical abilities of the editor and his sources, but the ultimate feature -- the cover story -- is about as close as you can get to marketing hype.
Today that paradigm really has changed. Anybody can see a press release just by going to a manufacturer's web site. You don't need someone to interpret that release for you -- you can make up your own mind about the validity of its content on your own. That's why over 3 years ago in "Analog Avenue*" I started to publish the text of a manufacturer's press release in full: Warts and all, silly comments and all, typos and all. Alongside that release I added my value to its appearance with comments abut the part in terms of its fit in the market, its features, its price.
The manufacturers of real parts loved it, the manufacturers of vaporware hated it. And what was noticeable about the releases I received was that they changed: Manufacturers started to use fewer silly executive "ego" quotes in their releases; most became cleaner and shorter; and the realization that publishing cycles had reduced from 8 weeks to 1 week or less changed the way that some products were internally approved as "released."
Yes, you are smart enough to make up your own mind.
*"Analog Avenue" continues to be used as a
title for a Knowledge Center in ChipCenter, a publication of eChips, Inc.