Media Criticism

Writers throughout the years have hoped that their works manage to make it beyond the next generation. As a freelance writer, I hope to create or promote an idea larger than myself that can be taken up by another writer in the future. This driving force leads me to write pages and pages of material everyday. The major issue with allowing my ideas and half-baked notions to reach the digital universe is that anyone can read it. In past generations, a writer could jot down an idea and allow it to sit in a journal because they had not other recourse for promoting their ideas. Professor Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger at Harvard University wants to return to that “useful void.�?

The “useful void�? idea was highlighted in GOOD Magazine’s year-ending issue. Professor Mayer-Schoenberger speaks for something called “data ecology�? which allows blog entries, articles and other expressions committed to virtual print to die off at a certain point in the future. This application of the natural process of life and death to the Internet is intriguing as someone who has changed his mind on certain topics but has articles floating out there archiving these old ideas. On the other hand, I like the idea that a reader can look back to something I wrote in college or graduate school and see how my writing has developed in the years since.

The temptation to jump on board with the “useful void�? notion is negated by the bad influence it would have on media. We need to have a permanent record of ideas so that the media can research position papers, blogs and other writings by public officials who are claiming to have done one thing while doing another. I hope that if I ever ran for office or reached a position where the public would care about my writing there would be a virtual record of my ideas to keep me honest. While Professor Mayer-Schoenberger’s idea is interesting for people who want to allow the past to fade away, I think that the “useful void�? would be akin to shuttering libraries because ideas in books by Upton Sinclair, Benton MacKaye and William Buckley are outdated.