I know traditional journalists sigh at the notion of Citizen Journalism (Read: Free).  The idea of pure amateurs reporting the world as they see fit.  No fact checking, no scrutiny, no authenticity – it’s a world turned upside down – a world based on innuendo, rumor and lies.  It would mark the end of the world.

The reality is that Citizen Journalists and traditional media can work together – breaking news and reporting stories together.   The paper can be the truth filter, whilst having access to a massive network of field reporters.

The Globe and Mail is one of growing number of media outlets that has embraced using the resources of the general public in helping break stories – this includes adding twitter feeds, posted videos, and images.

From the G20 summit riots to the Ontario Earthquake – the collective web of armature reporters help report stories in a real-time manner unimaginable just a decade ago.  In turn news organizations win by being able to see what’s the trending story, where the story is breaking – what is important to focus resources on.

The G20 stories, and all the assorted blogs covering the event create a pool of content “real” media organizations can utilize.  This content tells the story that would have been impossible to do with out having access to infinitive resources.

So citizen journalists play roll of news gatherer – and the traditional media acts as the filter.   The loop is complete when news organizations fail to cover stories the masses want reported – by turning to blogs, twitter, Facebook, comments sections or any other means to express their opinion about a current affairs event.

This article has not been fact checked in any way, shape or form.

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If you want to make any programmer instantly angry at you just utter the phrase: “oh ya, make sure it’s IE 6 compatible”.  IE 6 is now an ancient browser from a company that refuses to let it die.   This browser which shipped with XP SP 2 is rated by many one of the worst software programs of all time.  Beyond the security holes, it was most noitorius for it’s inability to support open standards.  Open standards allow programmers to easily design something that would look and function properly regardless of operating system or web browser.  Yet not supporting open standards was one of the methods Microsoft deployed to destroy Netscape and other start-up browsers.  By having a monoply of pre-installed browsers – MS was able to exert control.  With full market share designers began to only design for IE – so sites would look perfect in Explorer – yet be completely broken in Netscape.  Which browser would you use to surf the web?

And it worked very well for a very long time.  Even I became an Internet Explorer fan as IE just worked – well with their non-standard coding.  But over time Microsoft slowed development, new features and upgrades few and far between.  Tired of being stifled by the lack of innovation and new features consumers opted for new browsers that provided consumers with new innovations.

But in recent years IE has become the browser that is impossible to design for.  Sloppy coding, security holes, and so many conflicting standards.  Every successive browser that gets released seems to amplify the problem, as there’s compatability issues from browser to browser.   Microsoft has always been slow to make updates and release new product features.   And when it finally rolls out new editions, they simply are playing catch-up with Firefox, Opera, Safari or Chrome.

Since the anti-trust lawsuits of the 90′s started – Microsoft has all but avoided any form of integration with other MS products.  Which brings up the whole point of why bother?  No single corporation can win against open source.  A well oiled open source network has much more resources (including talent) available vs.  the resources their company can allocate.   The updates and improvements being made to Firefox now appear at lightning speed.

Therefore what purpose does IE serve?  Pride?  Clearly the trashing that IE gets in the media isn’t what you call good marketing, rather it’s the opposite.  The continous security threats and never ending patches doesn’t help present the rest of the organization in a positive light.  And you know you have problems when the Government of Germany advises it’s citizens not to use the browser – or when Google blames hacking of their products on compromised IE browser do you realize you have problems.

I’m sure there’s ways for IE to maintain it’s independence – but with a Mozilla Firefox core, just tweaked to be MS friendly.

Overall IE serves no purpose, it’s a distraction to the company, consumers and developers.

It’s time to admit defeat, and focus on core strengths.

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So what I’ve been thinking … is what if Twitter, Facebook wall posts and other similar services are developing into the short term memory of the internet?

It was an article in the August 2009 issue of Wired Magazine that had an opinion piece – “Remembering Not to Remember in an Age of Unlimited Memory” penned by Clive Thompson.  The commentary talked of how human’s were now having to confront the reality that what they say, what they post may live on forever in a digital world.  That the ease of archiving allows for information to be retained indefinitely.  But it really got me thinking – maybe there’s something wonderful about having all your day to day interactions, thoughts remembered.   What I began pondering was what is ‘memory’ in terms of the internet.  We know that the internet is a great archive of past events and ‘old’ content – but we don’t, until recently has the web been able to tell us what”s currently on it’s mind.

Well I think ‘real time’ is the final step in transforming the internet from a static entity into a fully functioning brain – with humans filling in the role of decision making, empithy and rationalization components of the memory system.
Think of it this way Internet already entails many of other other components that build the basis for a brain.  We have the long term memory (site content and archives), sight (images and video), sound, languages, and ability to recall all of this information on demand.  But what has been missing is short term memory.

So Twitter, especially via it’s trend tracking is showing what at this minute is on the mind of internet users – in real-time – with no “archives” skewing the results (like a search on Google News that will produce older material).  Not all of the trends are of particular interest long term, but some will resonate and live on and grow in importance – which will essentially etch them to the web’s more permanent “memory”.  For instance it’s reported that new movie releases that trend well see a huge spike in ticket sales.  Therefore our short term desires/thoughts – “what movie do I want to see”, becomes encoded to memory – through the actions of it’s users.

So think about this for a bit – but the implications are rather amazing.  Especially if it’s targeted – we could via software begin creating a more, well rounded functioning internet by incorporating these largely dismissed real-time search and posting systems.

- Stephen Crooks