Ain’t technology grand?
It’s great that I can tap into networks of really smart people with relevant knowledge and skills.
I can’t tell you how awesome it is that other professions have embraced the ability to break the barriers of time and space to collaborate.
It can’t help but make us smarter, or at least more confident we can access faster answers with a greater degree of success.
We’re not talking Wikipedia here, we’re talking about top experts bouncing ideas off each other.
It’s exciting, but after seeing a couple of recent articles, I’m both scared and relieved.
The Doctor Is (Linked) In
Social Media goes beyond Twitface and TubeBook and Flicklicious. There are social networks for just about anything, including one that had skimmed under my radar. Sermo is a social network for doctors, and boasts more than 100,000 members. You can’t just join, you have to be a licensed physician, and you use your unique license ID for signing up.
Now, instead of having to put up with Dr. House’s crap (or the local hospital equivalent,) doctors with difficult challenges and atypical cases can bounce ideas off each other in near real-time. House can outsmart a room full of doctors, but not a chat-room full of them.
However, there are concerns that 100,000 is too many for there to be certainty of trust. Dr. Jeffery Parks hit the danger perfectly late last month at MedCityNews:
“What if someone obtained access to Sermo for nefarious purposes? Perhaps a physician-turned-hospital administrator who went looking for dirt on a trouble-making internist. Or a malpractice attorney who used his brother-in-law’s log-on ID to troll for cases.”
The truth is that the wider your circle of trust, the flimsier the membrane that holds it together. The fictional doctors at Princeton-Plainsboro might really want to stick it to Dr. House one day, but ultimately they share a joint paycheck that holds them back from the brink of stupidity. Anonymous strangers from Parts Unknown don’t have the natural check-and-balance. And here, we’re not talking about just the personal spats and stats of doctors. It’s the confidentiality of your medical records, and his VD test, and her cancer screening, and whatever else is being shared.
When one person breaks the trust of the group, it chills the exchange, eventually rendering the network less potentially useful.
And it’s not just anonymity that breeds the potential for breaking trust.
First Amendment Versus Fourth Estate
Dr. Parks is rightfully concerned Sermo might one day have a “Journolist moment.” In the Journolist case, hundreds of reporters and editors who cover Washington politics used a private mail list to let off steam. They felt protected in that walled garden, and could speak freely about their personal views and biases.
Until someone broke the Circle of Trust.
That someone leaked volumes of emails and messages from the inside, and there are some real doozies. Reporters who carefully hid their biases from readers and viewers are now full-on exposed, by name. No doubt some of those passages are contextually manipulated to make them look bad, but many of them can’t look good in the name of objectivity no matter which angle you stream the light.
Let’s just say that depending on your predilection, it’s either fodder for the far right to grumble about bias, or it’s downright proof of media bias.
Others have written about the group-think in action, or the implications of these revelations (if indeed they represent more than tribal posturing.)
One thing that was missed, buried in the comments, is something far more damaging than bias.
Ignorance of Ignorance
The Daily Caller has been running with Journolist archives for a while now, and they almost have become old news. But a passage about the fear and loathing of Fox News made me turn my head:
Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at UCLA, suggested that the federal government simply yank Fox off the air. “I hate to open this can of worms,” he wrote, “but is there any reason why the FCC couldn’t simply pull their broadcasting permit once it expires?”
And so a debate ensued. Time’s [Michael] Scherer, who had seemed to express support for increased regulation of Fox, suddenly appeared to have qualms: “Do you really want the political parties/white house picking which media operations are news operations and which are a less respectable hybrid of news and political advocacy?”
Where to begin?
The Federal Communications Commission has authority over broadcast stations, which means those using the sacred and scarce over-the-air spectrum. Local stations carry licenses granted by the FCC, and those licenses are reviewed periodically. The FCC does not have the authority to touch cable, and really doesn’t even have a mandate to direct the activities of television networks like CBS and NBC. (In the case of the infamous Janet Jackson Super Bowl Nipple-Gate, the FCC didn’t fine the network – it merely fined the 20 CBS affiliates that happened to be owned by the Viacom.)
I’m somewhat nonplussed that neither Zasloff (the law professor) nor Scherer (the journalist) knew those boundaries.
I’m somewhat disheartened that of the hundreds of journalists who might have read that exchange, not a one of them understood the FCC’s limitations, or had the temerity to bring it up.
What Fosters Trust Also Feeds Inbred Thought
The closed ecosystem makes us feel safe to express the hopes and wishes we’re all entitled to. But it also breeds insular thinking, a group-think that becomes a litmus test for belonging above other potential qualifications. (see: East Anglia emails, Climategate.)
By the same token, a completely open ecosystem invites change and new ideas, but at the expense of the expedience that allows experts to share the confidential and proprietary in a safe environment.
Our understanding of the balance between Open and Closed strikes at the very heart of the effectiveness of these networks, whether they are answer boards, discussion forums, or our Facebook profiles. Yes, we’re social beings, but too many communities ignore the flaws of human nature. There’s a lingering hope that these enlightened technologies will free us from our base desires, our jealousies and our insecurities. But that hope is misplaced. I’m banking those same impurities of human nature may be the firewall that prevents us from sharing too much, and becoming victims of the inevitable breach of trust.
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A part from the challenge of weeding through postings and determining if they are credible or not, the “groupie” should always embrace the idea that one should never post anything they would not like to see published on the front page of any major newspaper (I guess now, on the home page of Facebook)… The whole elite concept of password protection creates a false sense of security. If it was engineered by one man, it can be reversed engineered by another.
Ike you keep pumping out original pieces with brilliant insight; I am honestly in awe. This is the reason I keep coming back to Occam’s RazR.
By the way the “What if someone obtained access to Sermo for nefarious purposes?” is actually today “Many obtain access to Sermo for nefarious purposes on a daily basis” for all the examples mentioned and plus. Many sermo posts have ended up in court and in the news which is why most physicians post under pseudonyms and avoid posting about issues that could end up publicly vented or biting you back (which proves your very last point).
I appreciate that, maybe more than you know. You’ve been around (as far as I know) for more than two years, and that says something.
Thank you.