I'm at a family reunion this weekend, so tracked the game on my blackberry yesterday. It's great to have another win and know this series is secure. And with Sheets on the mound today, hopefully it's even a sweep. It was also fun to be among Phillies fans since they took down the Cards.
But best of all last night was the conversation. Some families get together and sing show tunes. Mine does debate. From society to socialism to sports, it's all fair game.
Last night one fun skirmish was about the Internet and self-publishing. The issue is: If everyone can publish opinions as fact, then 1) how can you trust anything, and 2) how can there be any accountability.
This is especially true for politics, science and other major news. But I suppose also for minor league topics like sports.
Sure, we're all writing what we believe, but the voice may be larger, louder or even sometimes more vitriolic. Now that we can publish anonymously, people don't think twice about aspersions they would never say face-to-face.
Plus, since so much news travels today in links forwarded from friend to friend, maybe more and more people are hearing only about what "matters" in their circle...and ignoring the rest of the world.
Not that this is new. Someone pointed out that for most of human history, what you knew depended on who you met. Think nomadic groups at trading posts, swapping stories about what's dangerous down the road. The world narrows to just what your connections pass along.
We've lately had a heyday of worldwide media and exploding access to information. But in the torrent, people seem to be instinctively reverting back to the Friends News Network.
Maybe it's dangerous that we're using the global power of the Internet to shrink the world and shutter our views.
Maybe it's irresponsible, too, including me with my adamant but somewhat uninformed opinions jotted down in 10-minute bursts.
But then again, maybe 500 years ago, when self-published political pamphlets were helping change the world, people sat around at family reunions and had this exact same debate.
Or, maybe they simply did the only thing they could do back then: Sit around waiting for baseball to be invented, so they'd have something to really debate about.
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