It's All About Us" by Steven Johnson

For most of us, the internet has become a part of our everyday life. If we have any questions or want to connect with friends, we go online. Because of the quick and easy access of the internet, it has now become our most important information tool. Everyone now has a voice that the whole world gets to hear. But how can we drown out the voices of the people that we do not want to hear when we go online?
In the article “It’s All About Us” written by Steven Johnson he talks about how much information has changed from web 1.0 to web 2.0. There has been a big jump from the information that one could once get from the internet (web 1.0) to what we get from the internet today. Everyday people putting their personal opinions out on the web have now over taken the internet that was once seen as a tool where a person could get reliable credible information. There has been a big shift from clearly knowing when you are speaking to a professional to now everyone who has a computer can put in his or her ore. It seems that the amateurs are over taking the professionals. Johnson states “There is undeniably a vast increase in the sheer quantity of accessibility of pure crap” (447). What Johnson is saying is that because there is so much information out there that it is hard for the reader to determine what is crap or fact. When I go online to check up on a symptom that I may be having, I rely on the information to be accurate, but most of the time when I confront my doctor about what I had read about a certain concern, it is not correct. My doctor always warns me about getting medical information online, as it is not safe and rarely accurate. The Web 2.0 has been a window for every ordinary person out there in the world to have a voice. Everyone now is considered an expert because they can relate to an issue on a personal level. However, do they really deserve that title when so many of us just write about our everyday life’s that do not necessarily concern everyone in the world?
Johnson helped launch a service called “outside. in” that monitors the conversations that take place online about the neighborhoods around the country. What he monitored was that people were talking about what had been happening in their community. They spoke about the things that directly affected them and what they were passionate about. Because the information is filtered into topic areas, online users now have a specific place to go to find out and keep up to date with what is going on in their community. This seems like an excellent idea for the professionals that want a clear line drawn between what they put out on the web to those who just put their opinions and have not gone to school to study a given subject. Johnson states, “The fact is that most user-created content on the web is not challenging the authority of the traditional expert” (447). In saying this, he argues that people are not challenging the words of the traditional expert and that when we get online, professional or not that we all consider ourselves experts. The internet is taking away from those who have studied and disciplined their selves in news and education and continues to blur the line of what is professional or not. Outside.in would be a good idea for the professionals and the public, the information we receive online is filtered so that users can get some kind of dialog. You could find out about a subject easier and could tell the professional opinions over the general public thoughts and experiences because of the categories. The people that want to find out about what is going on with their community have a direct way of finding that out and the professionals have a place where their work can be appreciated.

There will always be the need for professional advice in everyone’s life, so it is important that when you seek out information online be very careful as you do not know if the source is credible. As we continue to move on in this fast pace electronic world filtering information will become more and more important. Therefore, it seems as Johnson’s outside.in service has arrived just in time