UnitTextITheGreatSeduction.docx

1、UnitTextITheGreatSeduction.Unit-Text-I-The-Great-Seduction 作者： 日期： Warm-up Small Group Discussion and WritingWhat benefits and drawbacks can the following Web 2.0 online activities bring to society? Have a small group discussion and complete the following table.Web 2.0 online activitiesBenefitsDrawb

2、acksDownloading, uploading and sharing images, audios, and videos on websites or web-based communitiesUsing or contributing to openly editable, web-based encyclopedia (e.g. Wikipedia and baidu百科)Viewing, sharing, and commenting on news on social networking sites Downloading and uploading ebooks, e-a

3、rticles, etc. on text-sharing websitesPrompts: These activities may speed up dissemination of knowledge but damage the interests of some content owners or producers Role Play(P23) Work in pairs. Student A assumes the role of a movie producer, and student B a music producer. Have a chat about the pos

4、itive and negative impact of the Internet on your own business. The teacher is to ask a few pairs to demonstrate their talk in class. Discussion (P23)1. What opportunities can the Internet offer to works of intellectual property? 2. What problems does it hold for works of intellectual property? The

5、Great SeductionLori Oliwenstein【1】First a confession. Back in the Nineties, I was a pioneer in the first Internet gold rush. With the dream of making the world a more musical place, I founded A, one of the earliest digital music sites. Once, when asked by a newspaper reporter how I wanted to change

6、the world, I replied, half seriously, that my fantasy was to have music playing from “every orifice,” to hear the whole Bob Dylan oeuvre from my laptop computer, to be able to download Johann Sebastian Bachs Brandenburg Concertos from my cellular phone. So yes, I peddled the original Internet dream.

7、 I seduced investors and I almost became rich. 【2】My metamorphosis from believer into skeptic lacks cinematic drama. It took place over fortyeight hours, in September 2004, on a twoday camping trip with a couple of hundred Silicon Valley utopians in Sebastopol, the headquarters of OReilly Media. Eac

8、h fall, OReilly Media hosts an exclusive, invitation-only event called FOO (Friends of OReilly) Camp. These friends of multimillionaire founder Tim OReilly are not only unconventionally rich and richly unconventional but also harbor a messianic faith in the economic benefits of the cult of the amate

9、ur and cultural benefits of technology. What unites them is a shared hostility toward traditional media and entertainment. For two full days, we camped together, roasted marshmallows together, and celebrated the revival of our cult together【3】The Internet was back! This shiny new version of the Inte

10、rnet, what Tim OReilly called Web 2.0, really was going to change everything. Now that most Americans had broadband access to the Internet, the dream of a fully networked, always-connected society was finally going to be realized. There was one word on every FOO Campers lips in September 2004. That

11、word was “democratization.” Media, information, knowledge, content, audience, author all were going to be democratized by Web 2.0. The Internet would democratize Big Media, Big Business, Big Government. It would even democratize Big Experts, transforming them into what one friend of OReilly called,

12、in a hushed, reverent tone, “noble amateurs.” 【4】Although Sebastopol was miles from the ocean, by the second morning of camp, I had begun to feel seasick. At first I thought it was the greasy camp food or perhaps the hot northern California weather. But I soon realized that even my gut was reacting

13、to the emptiness at the heart of our conversation. 【5】My dream of making the world a more musical place had fallen on deaf ears; the promise of using technology to bring more culture to the masses had been drowned out by FOO Campers collective cry for a democratized media. The new Internet was about

14、 self-made music, not Bob Dylan or the Brandenburg Concertos. Audience and author had become one, and we were transforming culture into cacophony. 【6】FOO Camp, I realized, was a sneak preview. We werent there just to talk about new media; we were the new media. The event was a beta version of the We

15、b 2.0 revolution, where Wikipedia met MySpace met YouTube. Everyone was simultaneously broadcasting themselves, but nobody was listening. Out of this anarchy, it suddenly became clear that what was governing the infinite monkeys now inputting away on the Internet was the law of digital Darwinism, th

16、e survival of the loudest and most opinionated. Under these rules, the only way to intellectually prevail is by infinite filibustering.【7】The more that was said that weekend, the less I wanted to express myself. As the din of narcissism swelled, I became increasingly silent. And thus began my rebell

17、ion against Silicon Valley. Instead of adding to the noise, I broke the one law of FOO Camp 2004. I stopped participating and sat back and watched. 【8】I havent stopped watching since. Ive spent the last two years observing the Web 2.0 revolution, and Im dismayed by what Ive seen. What Ive been watch

18、ing is more like Hitchcocks The Birds than Doctor Doolittle: a horror movie about the consequences of the digital revolution. 【9】Because democratization, despite its lofty idealization, is undermining truth, souring civic discourse, and belittling expertise, experience, and talent. As I noted earlie

19、r, it is threatening the very future of our cultural institutions. 【10】I call it the great seduction. The Web 2.0 revolution has peddled the promise of bringing more truth to more peoplemore depth of information, more global perspective, more unbiased opinion from dispassionate observers. But this i

20、s all a smokescreen. What the Web 2.0 revolution is superficial observations of the world around us rather than deep analysis, shrill opinion rather than considered judgment. The information business is being transformed by the Internet into the sheer noise of a hundred million bloggers all simultan

21、eously talking about themselves.【11】Moreover, the free, user-generated content spawned and extolled by the Web 2.0 revolution is decimating the ranks of our cultural gatekeepers, as professional critics, journalists, editors, musicians, moviemakers, and other purveyors of expert information are bein

22、g replaced by amateur bloggers, hack reviewers, homespun moviemakers, and attic recording artists. Meanwhile, the radically new business models based on user-generated material suck the economic value out of traditional media and cultural content.【12】Wethose of us who want to know more about the wor

23、ldare being seduced by the empty promise of the “democratized” media. For the real consequence of the Web 2.0 revolution is less culture, less reliable news, and a chaos of useless information. One chilling reality in this brave new digital epoch is the blurring, obfuscation, and even disappearance

24、of truth. To quote Richard Edelman, the founder, president, and CEO of Edelman PR, the worlds largest privately owned public relations company:【13】In this era of exploding media technologies there is no truth except the truth you create for yourself. 【14】This undermining of truth is threatening the

25、quality of civil public discourse, encouraging plagiarism and intellectual property theft, and stifling creativity. When advertising and public relations are disguised as news, the line between fact and fiction becomes blurred. Instead of more community, knowledge, or culture, all that Web 2.0 reall

26、y delivers is more dubious content from anonymous sources, hijacking our time and playing to our gullibility. 【15】Need proof? Lets look at “Al Gores Army of Penguins” to be exact. Featured on YouTube, the film, a crude “self-made” satire of Gores proenvironment movie An Inconvenient Truth, belittles

27、 the seriousness of Al Gores message by depicting a penguin version of Al Gore preaching to other penguins about global warming. 【16】But “Al Gores Army of Penguins” is not just another homemade example of YouTube inanity. In reality, the Wall Street Journal traced the real authorship of this neocon

28、satire to DCI Group, a conservative Washington, D.C., public relationships and lobbying firm whose clients include Exxon-Mobil. The video is nothing more than political spin, enabled and perpetuated by the anonymity of Web 2.0, masquerading as independent art. In short, it is a big lie.【17】As former

29、 British Prime Minister James Callaghan said, “A lie can make its way around the world before the truth has the chance to put its boots on.” That has never been more true than with the flattened, editorfree world where independent videographers, podcasters, and bloggers can post their amateurish cre

30、ations at will, and no one is being paid to check their credentials or evaluate their material. Media is vulnerable to untrustworthy content of every stripewhether from duplicitous Public Relation companies, multinational corporations like WalMart and McDonalds, or anonymous bloggers with sophistica

31、ted invented identities.【18】Truth and trust are the whipping boys of the Web 2.0 revolution. In a world with fewer and fewer professional editors or reviewers, how are we to know what and whom to believe? Because much of the usergenerated content on the Internet is posted anonymously or under a pseu

32、donym, nobody knows who the real author of much of this self-generated content actually is. As Marshall Poe observed in the September 2006 issue of the Atlantic, “We tend to think of truth as something that resides in the world”. The fact that two plus two equals four is written in the stars. But Wikipedia suggests a different theory of truth. The community decides that two plus two equals four the same way it decides what an apple is: by consensus. Yes, th