Transparency is the new objectivity
July 19th, 2009 by davidw
A friend asked me to post an explanation of what I meant when I said at PDF09 that “transparency is the new objectivity.” First, I apologize for the cliché of “x is the new y.” Second, what I meant is that transparency is now fulfilling some of objectivity’s old role in the ecology of knowledge.
Outside of the realm of science, objectivity is discredited these days as anything but an aspiration, and even that aspiration is looking pretty sketchy. The problem with objectivity is that it tries to show what the world looks like from no particular point of view, which is like wondering what something looks like in the dark. Nevertheless, objectivity — even as an unattainable goal — served an important role in how we came to trust information, and in the economics of newspapers in the modern age.
You can see this in newspapers’ early push-back against blogging. We were told that bloggers have agendas, whereas journalists give us objective information. Of course, if you don’t think objectivity is possible, then you think that the claim of objectivity is actually hiding the biases that inevitably are there. That’s what I meant when, during a bloggers press conference at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, I asked Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Walter Mears whom he was supporting for president. He replied (paraphrasing!), “If I tell you, how can you trust what I write?,” to which I replied that if he doesn’t tell us, how can we trust what he blogs?
So, that’s one sense in which transparency is the new objectivity. What we used to believe because we thought the author was objective we now believe because we can see through the author’s writings to the sources and values that brought her to that position. Transparency gives the reader information by which she can undo some of the unintended effects of the ever-present biases. Transparency brings us to reliability the way objectivity used to.
This change is, well, epochal.
Objectivity used be presented as a stopping point for belief: If the source is objective and well-informed, you have sufficient reason to believe. The objectivity of the reporter is a stopping point for reader’s inquiry. That was part of high-end newspapers’ claimed value: You can’t believe what you read in a slanted tabloid, but our news is objective, so your inquiry can come to rest here. Credentialing systems had the same basic rhythm: You can stop your quest once you come to a credentialed authority who says, “I got this. You can believe it.” End of story.
We thought that that was how knowledge works, but it turns out that it’s really just how paper works. Transparency prospers in a linked medium, for you can literally see the connections between the final draft’s claims and the ideas that informed it. Paper, on the other hand, sucks at links. You can look up the footnote, but that’s an expensive, time-consuming activity more likely to result in failure than success. So, during the Age of Paper, we got used to the idea that authority comes in the form of a stop sign: You’ve reached a source whose reliability requires no further inquiry.
In the Age of Links, we still use credentials and rely on authorities. Those are indispensible ways of scaling knowledge, that is, letting us know more than any one of us could authenticate on our own. But, increasingly, credentials and authority work best for vouchsafing commoditized knowledge, the stuff that’s settled and not worth arguing about. At the edges of knowledge — in the analysis and contextualization that journalists nowadays tell us is their real value — we want, need, can have, and expect transparency. Transparency puts within the report itself a way for us to see what assumptions and values may have shaped it, and lets us see the arguments that the report resolved one way and not another. Transparency — the embedded ability to see through the published draft — often gives us more reason to believe a report than the claim of objectivity did.
In fact, transparency subsumes objectivity. Anyone who claims objectivity should be willing to back that assertion up by letting us look at sources, disagreements, and the personal assumptions and values supposedly bracketed out of the report.
Objectivity without transparency increasingly will look like arrogance. And then foolishness. Why should we trust what one person — with the best of intentions — insists is true when we instead could have a web of evidence, ideas, and argument?
In short: Objectivity is a trust mechanism you rely on when your medium can’t do links. Now our medium can.
David,
I can’t argue with much of what you write, and don’t want to.
“Of course, if you don’t think objectivity is possible, then you think that the claim of objectivity is actually hiding the biases that inevitably are there.”
This is a good point. Still, I think there is some use for the term “objectivity”. It is a goal for which we should all strive, i.e., being willing to put our biases, assumptions, and even our well-thought out presuppositions (that persons are conscious of to varying degrees). We should, *objectively speaking*, be willing to give other views their day in court. This is the *right* thing to do. Now, one may say, “we should not even give the dignity of a response to holocaust deniers”, for example, but this presumes that all people stuck in this lie can not be persuaded by real evidence on the ground… that their overriding biases can not be overcome thought speaking the truth in love… I think it is a mistake. Further, if you really do care about someone, when they are stuck in a kind of thinking that is doing them (or someone they love harm), we really do want to help that person overcome their errors. So here, that holocaust-denier who is a family member that I care about becomes particularly important.
“….In fact, transparency subsumes objectivity. Anyone who claims objectivity should be willing to back that assertion up by letting us look at sources, disagreements, and the personal assumptions and values supposedly bracketed out of the report.”
Amen! “Anyone who claims objectivity” – by saying this, and by going on to illustrate the kinds of “right things” that this person can do in order to back up their assertion, you are actually agreeing with me, right: i.e., you are saying that we can, and really should seek objectivity in our lives. So we really are not disagreeing.
“Objectivity without transparency increasingly will look like arrogance. And then foolishness. Why should we trust what one person — with the best of intentions — insists is true when we instead could have a web of evidence, ideas, and argument?”
David, I fully agree with the first two sentences (although I think it may result in some persons being more unwilling to listen to others from the get go, that is, if the idea that there is no hope for any “common ground” takes hold in the minds of men). But the last one is tricky, and I think may be where we diverge… I think that it is tricky to balance trust in persons and our own critical thinking that produces our own tapestries composed of evidence, ideas, and arguments… This issue of when we trust persons, and for what needs more teasing out… I agree that a person better have good evidence, ideas and argument before they are trusted, but in the words of the Bible: one man presents his case and it sounds good, until another speaks…
In my mind, what is important is the real-life evidence – as the persons on the ground that are able and willing help make the facts they discover meaningful to us (here, don’t think along the lines of “Meaning of lifeâ€, or “coherent worldviewsâ€, or even “meaningful in a scientific sense”, but rather think first of all of the court of law, where in the course of testimony and cross-examination all the pieces often come together, helping people to arrive at conclusions, causing us to speak of things like “evidence beyond a reasonable doubt… even if we may want to avoid [and sometimes juries do this!] the conclusions) – they help things “make sense” to us. I think that ultimately, when the chips are down, it is only in this way – by constantly looking at evidence and wrestling with it – that there should be justification / warrant – and hence real power to adjust beliefs / ideologies / narratives (our sense of Meaning).
But alas – the history of the world would suggest that very few thinkers thoughtout the age have thought in this way… The Age of the Enlightenment is something of an aberration, I think.
-Nathan
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