Making the Call

I think indecisiveness has become a trend amongst myself, my friends and our generation. When should I start this assignment? Should I take a part time job this semester? Which bar do you want to drink at? The expansion of multimedia networks and mass production offers us an unlimited combination of choices, from a grocery list to your university portfolio. We shouldn't feel threatened, we need to keep embracing the potential that we now have. Our inabilities to make these choices stems from an inability to organize ourselves rather than an over abundance of information.

Consider the collapse of several prominent newspapers. The majority of them failed because they have not been able to profitably transfer themselves online. With so many different sources, is journalism killing itself out? I think if anything it’s a race to the top. First, to those who will be able to syndicate journals or sites online and charge an access fee (which in turn could result in higher quality reporting, faster access..) and secondly, for journalists to take advantage of their new found independence and authority.

We must also ask ourselves if we are concerned with the right decisions, or too concerned with the wrong ones. To avoid forgetting what I need at the grocery store, we make lists. To decide which product over another, we consider price, quality and hopefully nutritional value.

We don’t need to silence this new breed of reporters, we don’t need to disregard our options. We need to develop the ability to recognize legitimacy and significance so as to eliminate the counter-productive options and ignore those who abuse their power. We must advance with our technology so that we are not overwhelmed by it. So you get a two million hits on a search engine, which to chose? Learn to use the advanced search utility and the school’s databases. Those are powerful tools, and the type of organization that the web needs to keep developing to aid navigation and to advance as an entity. Personal decisions should be made based on what betters ourselves and those around us, and which offer us the most opportunities.