My Blog

As technology seems to improve at a rapid rate, the amateur content on the web also continues to rise. The increase of amateur content can be very beneficial to the public and at the same time it can be quite harmful. There are many benefits. Some can be that amateurs are able to capture certain events with almost the same accuracy as professionals and sometimes even better. For example, in the book it said that during the London bombings, photos were taken by citizens at the scene of the incident and its similar occurrences like this, professionals just don’t have the time to capture, unless they are present at that exact moment.

With social networks such as Flickr and the much newer Instagram, the individual is the reporter of the events, things and places they see. Especially with Instagram, an individual can take pictures of anything, from the food they eat, the things they see daily, and many more. Blogs such as this, Twitter, Wikipedia, online forums and many other platforms can be great ways for people to express their thoughts, feelings about certain events, provide information of certain topics and even provide news of current events.

With the improvement of technology and the time it takes for information to travel as compared to the days of the first telegraph or the telephone, the internet is greatly decreasing the time it takes information to get to a mass number of people. Thus, society is also changing, as now it’s much easier to form groups, address individuals in groups and thus, spread news and information to the greater masses much quicker.

The remarkable speed of information traveling and the rising of amateur publishers, reporters, photographers, etc., can also have negative effects. For example, reliability of the information must be questioned from amateurs as most public postings on the net are not regulated. Anything can be posted and credibility of the article or post is uncertain. Wikipedia is a great example of this, as users are given the option to edit any information on the site. Now this makes you think, if the information on Wikipedia is correct or false. Luckily, Wikipedia has certain users that check and correct the information within a day if incorrect information has been inputted.

Now imagine a small forum, or a blog that is not regulated or information is not checked to see if its correct. What happens then? This is one of the downsides of the improving technology and information spread around the net. We just have to be intelligent users, adapt to the improvements, and learn to separate reliable and credible information from those that are not quite up to par.