Internet Content : Author's Credentials

School was a pursuit of knowledge for me. I do remember being curious on digging deep on what was taught in the classroom. This aspect was encouraged by most of my teachers their primary teaching style was to start a discussion on topics rather than a one-way preach. Though there were times, when I just crammed up, not really interested in understanding what was being taught. History for example. Never had enough curiosity around Alexander the Great or the life style of people who dwelled the earth during the Maurya Empire. 

Irrespective of interest, what we had to do as students was to search for the data. There was emphasis on finding the right book, written by a credible author. A lot of us used to ask people around (teachers, elders in family and others around) for author recommendations and opinion on credentials of the author. This aspect is missing today to a large extent with the young ones, specially my kids and their friends and, friend's friends.

I spent about 2 hours with my kids, helping them out on their projects (they are in Std VI and Std III). Half the time my kids were ranting about googling this and googling that and them least interested in anything that did not figure in the top 5 results belted out by the search engine. No one was interested in verifying the credentials and credibility of people who had authored this content. The top 5 results of a google search has assumed the significance of a holy gospel.! I have had a similar experience in the corporate world where a very senior executive found comfort in the fact that assumptions of the project being debated in the risk management committee was based on the article that figured in the top five search results of a google search criteria. Had the content of this same article been quoted as hearsay or had been verbalized with no reference to the great world wide web, it would have been shot down by the risk management committee. Just to make my point, you could base assumptions of a Business Intelligence project on customer profitability around a document on breeding techniques of silk worms as long as this document comes up in the top five search results when you google for "Business Intelligence in Customer Profitability"!! Having made this absurd statement, it is definitively possible to get a document on breeding techniques of silk worms or any other worm to come up in top five search results as you google for BI techniques and/or technologies used in customer profitability projects. Nothing absurd about that. Anything is possible with the right kind of tagging and coding for search result rankings.

The other day, as I watched Barkha Dutt interview Nikesh Arora of google, she had mentioned that someone is always marrying her off to various people in Wikipedia! Public domain content needs to be digested with discretion. One needs to understand the intent with which the content has been staged and the motive behind the content uploaded. Students today are skilled at using search engines effectively. One needs now training on understanding the motives and objectives behind the authoring of the content before consuming it for use either in personal or professional life.

This problem is actually age old. Different authors have delivered different interpretations of Mahabhart, Ramayan and the Bhagvat Geeta. Each portraying their own strong belief systems and uni-polar thought and ideals that have shaped their up-bringing. I only wish that content published, be it Ramayan, Bhadgvat Gita, Quran, Bible or cutting edge internet security technologies; stop preaching and start structuring the content in a manner where after establishing base facts, the content opens up the readers mind for debate and insightful thinking rather than preaching the authors view point. A well structured and well intentioned piece of literary or technology content always sets up the mind for a deep intellectual debate within. With collaboration technologies like facebook and wikipedia, a well structured content gives the connected digital natives to explore uncharted territories in each other mind and enhance the pursuit of knowledge and innovation.

I wish that experts come out with a technique to teach the digital natives on various ways the content needs to be dissected and analysed for intent, accuracy and mood educate the content consumers on stripping these aspects out before consuming content.