There’s a habit to compare certain things that are really complex to something most people are familiar with. In this instance, I never thought of thinking about the Internet as my flashy new- probably manual- car. The problem we now run into is: where or what is the manual for this new car?
There is a Manual
Most people probably don’t think of the internet as a car, but someone out there did, and they decided to write up what they claim is “the internet’s driver manual you never got.” “Verified” by Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineburg is a really helpful how-to guide to get you to think differently with the way you interact with the internet. It really gets you to rethink the steps and beliefs you were told to do and have when it comes to doing research and figuring out what is true or fake on and about websites.
Don’t believe me? It’s in the subtitle.
Introducing SIFT
In just the first chapter, “Verified” teached you a brand new method to verify the information you ready: SIFT.
- STOP
- INVESTIGATE THE SOURCE
- FIND OTHER COVERAGE
- TRACE THE CLAIM, QUOTE, OR MEDIA TO THE ORIGINAL CONTEXT
In all honesty, when I read this chapter, I was a bit baffled that not everyone is already following the steps of SIFT. As someone who doesn’t trust anything on the internet, I need to find the original source of information. Things like leaks and rumors, I choose to believe as not true until proven true.
The examples in the book explain how you can use the steps of SIFT to figure out what it is you’re reading and whether or not you can trust it. This book really does hold your hand to make sure you understand what it is that you are being taught.
SIFT is a great way to maneuver information so you can stop believing in Spider-squirrels, but did you know there’s other ways you can determine information as fake or not on the internet?
Breaking Habits
Chapters two and three of “Verified” are the hard swallow pills of truth when it comes to Internet etiquette because guess what? The etiquette you’ve been taught is a suggestion not a rule.
The biggest- oh no my life is a lie- moment in this book comes from the header “URLs Matter… Except When They Don’t” in chapter two.
That chapter teaches you about signals on determining if a website, claim, or information is legit. The domains on URLs are always judged because someone somewhere told you a .com is a scam and a .org is not. “Verified” is here to teach you to think more carefully not just with URLs but with the way you ask Google things. Seriously check out chapter three.
After reading this you may realize you don’t know as much as you thought you did, but luckily, Caulfield and Wineburg have a manual to help us drive that car we call the internet.
Comments
3 responses to “The Internet is A Car and I’m Driving It”
Your title is perfect. I love that you designed it completely around the idea of driving a car, and looking in a car manual. Granted, as you said as well, it is stated so it’s nothing out of the ordinary, but bringing it into focus allows the reader to really understand the purpose of the book, and you do a great job here.
SIFT is a perfect representation of what a technological manual would look like, and on top of that navigating google hits even more in my opinion. Due to the fact that you have to design how you want to ask a question can alter how Google is going to perceive it and from there provide you answers. This allows you to have complete control over what you want to look through, and on top of using major search debunks like SIFT be able to navigate through the internet.
Firstly, I never really thought of manuals as a How-To-Guide, but I guess they kinda are. Secondly, You do a great job covering the early chapters of Verified. Your section “Breaking Habits” is the best part of this post. You write of how URLs are not actually that important. I remember how when my generation (Gen Z), were in school, we were taught to care about the URL above everything else. We were taught a wide variety of techniques that ended up being terribly unhelpful for practical internet usage. It’s not their fault, they were looking at the internet the way you would with books. But now we all have habits or biases that make it harder to find good and accurate information on the web.
I love that you used the analogy of a car in this post. I think that really is the best way to describe what Verified is and everything that it’s trying to do. I also understand your confusion about how people don’t already follow SIFT. I’m not going to pretend that I stay super up to date on news and fact check literally everything but as soon as I see something that seems the tiniest bit off I still Google it because I just want to see if it’s true. There were a few parts in the book where they gave advice and I was like, “Do people not already do this?” Overall, I think you did a great job of summarizing all of the important things we covered.