Rheingold writes about his observation of the growth of “texting” as a new means of communication; he notes that everyone seems to be looking at their phones instead of talking into them. The conclusion is made that the growth of mobile Internet will increase the importance of our mobile phones, bringing every piece of information we might need into our palms. Ironically, I took a break from reading the piece to pick up a call and to check my Facebook, both on my iPhone.

This current vision of iPhones and Android-powered devices was a legitimate hypothesis for the future 10 years ago. What’s so funny to me is that our current legitimate hypotheses for the future are comprised of what used to be true scifi and fantasty- appliances that talk to each other and surfaces embedded with giant glass computer screens, everything communicating wirelessly. All that seems to be missing is flying cars, but since it’s become obvious that the car industry is lagging a bit these days, I’m not surprised. Seriously, the future we’re moving into is a legitimate version of Minority Report meets The Fifth Element meets The Jetsons.

At any rate, I was inspired by Rheingold’s introduction; it conjured up visions of my cell phone morphing into an epic remote control with the immense power to deliver me every miniscule piece of information about everything (and everyone) on the planet. His discussion of the pros and cons of this social networking is powerful, and we have already seen the manifestations of much of it (consider Iran this summer).

I just wish he had published something more recently; I’m off now to watch his TED talk, but it’s from 2005. I’m also following him on Twitter, but it’s not yielding much. I’m more interested in what he has to say ABOUT twitter than what he’s saying on twitter, if that makes sense. No upset here, though; I respect Social Mobs enough to leave it at that and walk away pleased.

… and what does this have to do with journalism, you ask? It has everything to do with journalism, because journalism is the democratic act of bringing information from citizens to other citizens. And that is exactly what the social mobs revolution is doing.

Let me just say off the bat: the piece is beautifully written, often illustrated by the kind of beautiful statements that I stop to write down. Passages like these:
“Journalism, after all, is about reality, not fantasy; there are no fairies or dreams in journalism, only the contours of nature and the dreary but familiar faces and words of our fellow beings.”
“What is initially private becomes public, and so in journalism society is born and reborn every day.”

Additionally, the piece reminded me of a conclusion I came to while studying journalism in London. Journalism is a profession most often filled with a mix of philosophical purpose and nostalgia; journalists see their duty to society as one that involves the highest honor. This is not to say that I don’t agree, but considering Adam’s piece ends with the phrase, “… journalism can be and often is one of our highest arts,” it’s easy to see what journalists think of themselves. In all seriousness, I think that’s one of the reasons I’m so drawn to the profession; a sense of purpose and drive is almost a personal requirement.

At any rate, Adam offers a brilliant look at the basics of journalism, focusing not on the effect or outcomes of news but on the composition of journalism itself. This is invaluable to me, because I want to understand the basics of what we consider “news” or “journalism” before I begin to redefine these terms for the digital age. Adam begins with, “A preliminary definition might go like this: Journalism is an invention or a form of expression used to report and comment in the public media on the events and ideas of the here and now,” and continues on quite extensively. The discussion most important to me was one of the ways that journalists give an expressive representation in words of their observations; it continues deeper into a story of how they frame their experiences and form the consciousness from which a story develops. Journalists are observers, and they paint a grammatical picture of the things they’ve experienced. The stories they present are interpretative, of course, but factual at the basic level. This godly interpretation of the role of the journalist might be taking it a bit far, but it’s certainly inspiring.

There are a few sections that also spoke to the ways that I’ve seen journalism develop on the internet. Adam writes, “I believe that journalism is a fundamentally democratic art and through it, as others have observed, a free society engages in conversation with itself.” Today, journalism is evolving into even more into a way for society to engage in conversation with itself; have we not seen the popular ideas of message boards, commenting, blogging, Twitter, etc allowing a greater level of conversation?

Furthermore, Adam remarks that “James Carey has noted that it is useful to think of the newspaper as a curriculum- to be judged, in other words, by how it follows a story day by day or month by month rather than by the character and substance of each story.” The internet, more and more, is enabling the creation of long-form stories and follow-up stories; it is creating a news media more capable of providing a curriculum of news. We no longer have to rely on short daily briefs- we can edit and compile a story that changes and grows as the events develop in real time.

On an unrelated note, I also enjoyed Adam’s criticisms of liberal arts educations; he writes:
“I have argued that reporting is defined far too narrowly to guide the development of an ambitious writer, that the liberal arts and not necessarily liberal anymore…”
“…the liberal arts are organized for the most part within disciplines rather than across disciplines, and they contribute only randomly to the student’s real education.”

This is an argument for another day, but it’s true that the liberal arts aren’t as interdisciplinary as they should be or, even, quite as liberal as they should be. I think that the extreme rise of globalization is forcing liberal arts colleges to do something about the problem, though, so I’m not too worried. Wellesley, at least, seems to have some plans for new interdisciplinary programs… at least in entrepreneurial environmental engineering. Media studies seems to have been left out, but I guess I’d be the only one interested.

Overall? Good background essay, beautiful read, and amazingly compelling considering I didn’t start reading until 10PM. Impressive. I’ll keep pushing through this book, even though it’s not entirely relevant.