“Stuff” and “fluff”
reading gave me so much to think about and ask myself, especially about the use
of social media in those days and about others aspects as well. I think this
reading and the one named “Choosing the Focused Life” are much interconnected.
“Choosing the Focused Life” I think it takes
more a philosophical, self-help approach in which the main message is that you
need to stay focused on the right things so your life is less a reaction and
more a creation or a result of what you do. The reading also mentions how
crucial is to pay attention to the right things to achieve a better life and
how those decisions can have a great impact in our lives. I really enjoyed the
reading and I stayed thinking how we can stay focused if we are constantly
bombarded with so much information in our cellphones and social media? I
realized how hard is for me to find some time to reflect about my
life or what I am doing some times since I have to admit that I have a constant need to look
for Twitter feed or Facebook. I struggle to avoid this “information seeking
addiction”. If you know a cure for this, let me know.
The
way in which Lanham chapter is connected to the reading about the focused life
is that the only way in which information have sense is when it is an object of
humans’ attention. Thus, we see how our life can change for bad or worse if we
stay focused in some kind of information. I think the main point of choosing
information is who or what tell us if we are getting the right information or
not? Are the sources worthy of our trust and even more worthy of our attention?
Apparently, the solution is information filters. However, I found a blog post
of an interview that was made to the author of this reading, Richard Lanham, who
said:
“Information
filters are not what this bifurcated world needs the most. It is training in
how to recognize which kind of reality you face and thus what kind of economics
applies to the situation at hand; otherwise you may be conducting the wrong
kind of cost-benefit analysis or, perhaps, waging the wrong kind of war”
What the
author implies to say here is that we need a way in we can get a model of
economic attention. In the interview the author mentions the urgent need to
have a scheme of functions and forms to help us. My understanding is that this
need might help individuals to make a difference between stuff from what he
calls stuff, commodities or substance and merely fluff.
This notion
of information filters and economics of attention just make me thinks about the
app or site Yelp and a recent debate about a new policy they introduced. For
those who don’t know Yelp provides directory service that is connected with
social media to allow people to review mainly restaurants but also hotels, doctors
and more. This past October they announced a new “alert service” that let users
know when a review is suspected to be inflated or paid. The way in which they
track biased reviews is when a company has too many reviews from the same IP address.
This measurement technique is arguable according to the author or the article.
You can take a look of the article here.
What I want
to bring with this example is just an idea of how information can be “monetized”
for bad and how reviews are an industry of information and thus becoming part
of this economics of information described by Lanham. For this example, the
question is what happened if all of these super positive reviews are misleading
people and make them go to the wrong places or buy poor quality products? Even
more, how many of them are just “fluff” reviews with no interesting substance
that gives you a clear idea about buying something or not. It is interesting to
see how all these reviews might contribute for a business owner to make more
money or not.
Moreover, how many people are being paid to
post inaccurate reviews to induce people to buy more “stuff”? I think it is
helpful that Yelp it is doing something to partially avoid this biased reviews
but on the other hand I ask myself how many other reviews site are not even
caring about this. Even more, this just makes me think about how much more “fluff”
might be around there when we read those
supposedly positive or furious post on companies’ Facebook walls like Walmart
or Panera. Are the users real? How much honest are they? There are so many of
this kind of sites now, from reviewing apartments to professors that I
definitely don’t think they are taking care of the quality of their reviews.
Therefore, we might be bringing our attention and focusing in the wrong things
and that definitely can make an impact in our choices, as Gallagher mentions in
“Choosing the Focused Life”
Sources:
Comstock,
P. (2007, April 3). Richard Lanham Discusses the “Attention Economy”. In California
Literary Review. Retrieved March 6, 2013, from http://calitreview.com/73/richard-lanham-discusses-the-attention-economy/
Reisinger,
D. (2012, October 18). Yelp clamps down on paid reviews with new 'consumer
alert'. In cnet. Retrieved March 6, 2013, from
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57535140-93/yelp-clamps-down-on-paid-reviews-with-new-consumer-alert/
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