Information By Crowds: DC Inside

As I posted on my first blog, it is true that there is lack of specialty on web-based information. Knowledge provided from anonymous people is too huge and groundless, so sometimes unbelievable rumors threat truth on the Internet. However, let me explain my experience. In our class, ITEC 335, we post our opinion on our blog every week. As you know, I am exchange student and my first language is not English, so I cannot write academic essay well. However, blog posting in this class does not require accuracy of grammar and form, so it makes me possible to do posting confidently and freely. I think information on the Internet is same with my experience. We can write and express our creative and different opinions through free way of Internet blogging, and sometimes, it can be theme of academic research.

In Korea, there is a site named DC Inside. At first, it was for exchange information about digital cameras. People could read review and comment about new digital cameras on this site. During writing and commenting about cameras, people started talk about weird gossips, and the creator of the site made several bulletin boards, called Gallery, and it became Korea’s one of the biggest web communities. These days, there are numerous galleries such as digital equipments, game, spots, universities, districts, stocks, automobile, vessel, law, composite photograph, even presidents, politicians, insect and parasites, and the categories are still updated. The main characteristic of this site is creating and culture beyond conception by exchanging information and thinking, with specialty, by amateurs. They use their own languages, like “햏” (it means nothing, and it is not even Korean; they just type it by combining some Korean characters)

However, they make big stream even on academic world. There are many essays and papers about DC inside. Scholars say that it’s so surprised, because people who don’t have academic degrees on fields’ research on their interest, and accumulate lots of database, and exchange them with their opinions. Bulletin board themselves can become books about special themes written by amateurs. It means by using Internet, information saved in everywhere can be gathered together and shown to all over the world, not only by few of elites, but by many crows. Therefore, many people so called elites study about DC Inside’s success case, and their form of cyber community.

I presented unfamiliar site, DC Inside. I don’t’ know well about many American sites, but I think there are plenty of sites based on free opinion of ordinary but different people (if you know that kind of sites, please tell me by comments! I wanna go there.) I think people who insist future of digital world depends on elites are wrong, because every field can be a theme of study, and they are not belong to special someone, but belong to everyone living in everywhere. I believe that strong points based on diversity of source of information and efforts to overcome negative effect of amateurism of Internet are motive power of over the web 2.0 generation.