[wordup] Truth is being flattened?

[Adam Shand]

The YouTube incident he mentions seems like just another incarnation of 
astroturfing, but the general idea is quite interesting.

Adam.

Via: http://planet-geek.com/archives/003790.html
Source: http://www.randi.org/jr/2007-03/032307hope.html#i4

However, in a remarkable book just brought to my attention, “The Cult of 
the Amateur,” by Andrew Keen, I offer you this excerpt, which is, I 
believe, very pertinent to the situation I am attempting to clarify here:

"Truth… is being "flattened," as we create an on-demand, personalized 
version of the truth, reflecting our own individual myopia. One person's 
truth becomes as "true" as anyone else's. Today's media is shattering 
the world into a billion personalized truths, each seemingly equally 
valid and worthwhile. To quote Richard Edelman, the founder, president 
and CEO of Edelman PR, the world's largest privately owned public 
relations company:

"In this era of exploding media technologies there is no truth except 
the truth you create for yourself.

"This undermining of truth is threatening the quality of civil public 
discourse, encouraging plagiarism and intellectual property theft and 
stifling creativity. When advertising and public relations are disguised 
as news, the line between fact and fiction becomes blurred. Instead of 
more community, knowledge, or culture, all that Web 2.0 really delivers 
is more dubious content, from anonymous sources, hijacking our time and 
playing to our gullibility.

"Need proof? Let's look at that army of perjurious penguins – "Al Gore's 
Army of Penguins" to be exact. Featured on YouTube, the film, a crude 
"self-made" satire of Gore's pro-environment movie An Inconvenient 
Truth, belittles the seriousness of [his] message by featuring a penguin 
version of Al Gore preaching to other penguins about global warning.

"But [this film] is not just another homemade example of YouTube 
inanity. Though many of the 120,000 people who viewed this video 
undoubtedly assumed it was the work of some SUV-driving amateur with an 
aversion to recycling, in reality, the Wall Street Journal traced the 
real authorship of this neo-con satire to DCI Group, a conservative 
Washington, D.C. public relationships and lobbying firm whose clients 
include ExxonMobil. The video is nothing more than political spin, 
enabled and perpetuated by the anonymity of Web 2.0, masquerading as 
independent art. In short, it is a big lie."