Internet Tower of Babel

An informed citizenry is essential to democracy and so the world has learned that revolution simmers in Iran, a nuclear-armed North Korea plans dangerous provocations, and that employees of the City of Brooksville, FL, must wear underwear at work.

This wide-ranging view of the burning issues of our time comes hard on the heels of an earlier revelation, mainly that whatever his other talents and duties, President Obama is good at killing flies. Millions of us watched the videoclip of decisive presidential action in the face of airborne attack.

While there was no word from the White House on whether the late fly acted alone or was part of a larger effort, informed sources said that flies breaching the supposedly airtight security of the White House had become routine.

Nonetheless, President Obama’s summary execution of the fly drove reporters to buzz about PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) until PETA said in as low-key a way possible that it wished the fly still had its buzz and added it was sending the president a catch-and-release fly trap.

Getting back to the underlying information in the Brooksville story, the Tampa Bay Online website reports that enforcing the undies rule is up to supervisors who must be on the lookout for “unacceptable attire,” which includes "the observable lack of undergarments and exposed undergarments.”

Neither the Tampa Bay Online story or an Associated Press pickup that identified the Tampa Tribune’s website as the source of the story mentioned whether a Brooksville supervisor repeatedly staring at an employee’s private areas in an effort to determine whether they were wearing underwear could be accused of sexual harassment.

Research shows that direct action is no stranger to Brooksville. The city’s web site explains it was named for Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina, who became so incensed when a senator from Massachusetts denounced a senator from South Carolina during an 1856 debate that he later used his cane to knock him senseless.

All of this information comes to me on the internet, of course, and it illustrates one of the challenges ahead as old-line media withers and dies – the internet has no editors.

The world today is just as screwy a place as it was twenty years ago, but the difference is that twenty years ago editors separated the stuff we needed to know from the stuff we probably didn’t want to know.

That doesn’t happen now, including at many of the old-media shops that still survive. Editing is out and marketing is in. Editing decides what information is important and relevant and what isn’t. Marketing merely matches information to perceived demand. Parents edit what their kids eat. Marketers only care that their product is eaten.

The result is that the ability to communicate is vastly outstripping the ability to sort and understand. It’s happened before. In Genesis, the result was a tower called Babel.

I wonder what we’ll call ours.

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