I like truth. I seek truth. Which is why I hate the web.
Well...that's not true, I don't hate the web. On the contrary, my job is the web. What I hate is how people are using the web. For instance, my uncle recently sent me an email about Barack Obama saluting the National Anthem. These are Barack's "words:"
"It should be swapped for something less parochial and less bellicose. I like the song 'I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing.' If that were our anthem, then I might salute it."
Clearly a vetted presidential candidate did not say this (it's actually a satire from blogger John Semmens). Nonetheless, someone published this somewhere on the web, someone else linked to it or emailed it to a friend, and suddenly it's gospel. That's the problem with the web. Information spreads SO quickly that it's taken as fact before it's validated.
So, a customer could write scathing remarks about you on blogs or discussion boards faster than you can debunk or respond to their complaint. On the one hand, this empowers average joe to be a participant in society (writing about political candidates, writing about cable companies, writing about poor service at a coffee shop). Empowerment is great! Especially after tiresome decades of having news/information fed to us by large politically motivated media corporations.
Empowerment is also very very dangerous, in the case of my uncle who sends "news" around to his friends and family without verifying it. For some examples, lookup the keywords "barack," "palin," "mccain." Then check out the page count for any of the bogus looking posts to see just how many people are reading bogus information.
So, a customer could write scathing remarks about you on blogs or discussion boards faster than you can debunk or respond to their complaint. On the one hand, this empowers average joe to be a participant in society (writing about political candidates, writing about cable companies, writing about poor service at a coffee shop). Empowerment is great! Especially after tiresome decades of having news/information fed to us by large politically motivated media corporations.
Empowerment is also very very dangerous, in the case of my uncle who sends "news" around to his friends and family without verifying it. For some examples, lookup the keywords "barack," "palin," "mccain." Then check out the page count for any of the bogus looking posts to see just how many people are reading bogus information.
