Rosenberg and Postman's Articles

In the Context of Web Context:


I found that this article offered helpful tips on how to navigate the web. Something that I have found to be more and more of a problem in my post-graduate life is stepping into the world outside the college bubble and facing the onslaught of both news and "news." Differentiating between good and bad sources is crucial-- as an example, just today I was researching the Zika disease that has become so prevalent. I noted that along with major news sites, there was an article about it on Buzzfeed. Nothing against the writer, but when I think "reliable," Buzzfeed isn't the first website to come to mind.
Learning how to sort through all the junk is a crucial skill, and I especially will remember "whois." I believe Rheingold mentioned that resource as well, and I have already bookmarked it for future use.
Rosenberg also mentioned other internet checks and balances that I had never thought of, such as looking up the site in Internet Archive, and looking into the source code. These are just further tools that will be helpful additions to my skill arsenal.


How's Your Bullshit Detector?


Hmmm. As for this article.
Although I can certainly relate to the frustration expressed by Stephen Pizzo, I felt that it wasn't a very worthy introduction to the piece that followed. It was extremely opinionated and rather scattered. In fact, I was fairly confused at first as to what I was reading, before I recognized it as a lead-in to the main point, Postman's address.
On that note, I'll turn to Postman. I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly with the first few paragraphs of his address. I believe that Hemingway would be proud of the way in which his famous phrase has been expounded upon, because crap detection is an important skill to have. Bullshit wastes everyone's time and, looking at this from the perspective of a future professor, I don't want to waste my students' time, or my own.
I was totally on board with the points Postman made about pomposity and inanity- my favorite part of the article was as follows,

"The press and air waves are filled with the featured and prime-time statements from people who are in no position to render informed judgments on what they are talking about and yet render them with elan and, above all, sincerity. Inanity, then, is ignorance presented in the cloak of sincerity."

I couldn't agree more, this is extremely frustrating to me and I was glad to hear it said so eloquently.

However, I started losing Postman's train of thought as he started talking about "Eichmannism," and had to do some research on the side to understand that reference, which distracted me from the point of the article. When he went on to superstition, he lost me completely. I felt that his points went from objective to opinionated. At first the address was factual and engaging, but when he introduced superstition, it got rather meta and he lost me.
Further, I have to pose the question-- is it the job of the teacher to educate the youth along such subjective lines? Perhaps it is the job of the teacher to instruct against writing bullshit that purposely wastes the time of everyone involved, but I would ague that it is not the job of the teacher to educate subjective thought.

I look forward to discussing this article further in class.