The Center for History and New Media at George Mason University has an interesting podcast from last month. From their Digital Campus website:

Check it out at: http://digitalcampus.tv/.

I’ve been a faithful Daily Show watcher since high school. So, when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert – two comedians from Comedy Central – announced their “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” the announcement didn’t strike me as odd. These two men were going to host a rally in Washington, D.C.? So what?

It was obvious that the rally was going to be an extension of their shows. The two have made a career of openly spoofing the media for it’s worst failures. Sure, Stewart and Colbert are liberals, but at the core their criticism has never been one of ideology. It’s been of messaging.

A lot of people don’t realize that.

Keith Olberman, for example, disliked the rally’s message to “take it down a notch.” Apparently, that would risk conceding to Fox News and the right.

Others have argued that the rally accomplished nothing. Or, that it simply mocked legitimate activism by Glenn Beck and the Tea Party.

David Carr’s piece in the New York Times was one of the few that caught the rally’s point while countering that Stewart is wrong in his analysis. TV pundits only reach a small audience. We really are in serious times.

Browsing though the blogs out there, everyone appears to have their own interpretation. That makes sense. Satire is complex. It thrives on individuals drawing their own conclusions. To crystallize things though, I’d like to highlight a few key passages from the rally’s closing.

Reflecting on these passages, Stewart’s point should be clear. The press and the media are guardians of our national discourse. And, for whatever reason they don’t always communicate properly. They mess up. This mislead us. They blow things out of proportion. They sometimes cater to the lowest common denominator, and if you need evidence?

Well, just watch the Daily Show.

Stewart is thriving because the media is seen as failing. And, if anything Saturday’s rally showed that he doesn’t necessarily want them to. Neither does this librarian.

Yesterday, Google rolled out it’s latest in a string of improvements to their search functionality. Google Instant’s, “most obvious change is that you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press “search.” [It...] helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback.” At first I was impressed. Then, I realized this is nothing new.

To balance out the “feelings of euphoria and weightlessness,” here are some reasons why users should to come back to Earth:

All-in-all, I’m pleased with the changes they’ve made. Given some of the hype out there, though, these points sum up exactly what Google Instant is: a nice tweak. We aren’t seeing anything new, it’s not special, and it certainly isn’t a fundamental breakthrough.

Bricks in the Wall: 5.75/10.

Whatdya know?

A recent Gallup poll found that only 25% of Americans express “quite a lot of confidence” in newspapers. Television news, believe it or not, fares even worse with just 22% expressing confidence. Too bad they didn’t survey alternative sources or check for source bias. I guarantee you that conservatives trust Fox News more than broadcast news as a whole.

Also, all of this begs the question. Where’s the literacy education going on out there? And, do Americans know how information sources like this are produced?

Unless you’ve lived Ted Kaczynski style this past year, nobody in their right mind would say it’s been a harmonious one – politically, socially, or economically. I guess you can say a lot of people are pissed off. They’re pissed at heathcare reform, they’re pissed at the economy, and they’re pissed at a gazillion other little things like the I-Pad. Let’s face it, in America righteous indignation is in.

With information as accessible as it ever was, current news spreads fast.  But, is that a good thing? Is there a dark side to having quick access to information? I don’t doubt that there are many, many benefits,  but it’s also plausible that a universal acceptance of new media can lead to an inevitable playing toward the lowest common denominator?

Like sex, anger and frustration sell remarkably well.

Now, to be fair there’s a long tradition in journalism of people playing to others feelings, and new media doesn’t change that, but it’s also realistic to believe we are witnessing a sort of megaphone effect. People naturally look to validate their own beliefs and we all have source biases. But, given that there are so many sources out there the promulgation of information means that today it’s possible to validate anything. Once upon a time objective research was considered to be important. Today it garners CNN’s ratings.

As time goes on and the general public “backs up” their arguments using easily found resources, I suspect, they will also come to more rigidly defend them. After all if you can find it quickly then it must be true, right? The more rigidly the general public defends their arguments, of course, the more likely we are to see an increase in the volume of national discourse.

If this is the case, then the free flow of information may actually come at a cost. Blogs, Twitter,  and the changing technology driving shifts in information seeking behaviors… I see them as partially to blaim.