The Rumor Mill

I've commented a little bit about weblogs as "rumor mills." For the past few months, I've been following the online rumor mill surrounding my own work. Shortly after I finished graduate school, my lab produced a press release involving my work. We tried to keep everything as accurate as possible, but due to its rarity my work is difficult to explain even to experts.

As the report spread from press to press around the world (my favorite was a tech magazine in Vietnam), it inevitably moved onto blogs and online fora. I actually responded to one post which (for reasons unknown) was posted in a forum titled "Mini-ITX form factor" (the mini-ITX is a low-power, small form-factor PC motherboard). As the story spreads, adjectives get deleted and the story gets a little out of control. For example:

The Informatics Circle of Research Excellence (iCORE) High-Capacity Digital Communications Laboratory researchers have designed a computer chip that uses around 100 times less energy than current market-leading chips. The iCORE Processor, developed by Dave Nguyen and Chris Winstead, former engineering graduates of the University of Alberta uses new analog processing technology that is currently used by Winstead to build the largest analog decoder chip ever fabricated.

It employs a new method of processing digital data via methods of analog decoding, the iCORE chip uses extremely low levels of power to execute its detection algorithm. No other chip has been recorded to function with such a low level of energy. With this low level of energy consumption, theoretically a cellphone could run for a full year on a single charge.

[Emphasis Added]

I've seen a lot of little twists like that. It should read "No other iterative decoder chip...". The distinction is important. Some articles almost make it sound like we've created a new manufacturing technology for low-power chips.

As I collected these rumor-mill examples, I became reminded of the very point I've been making for years: the web is not a rumor mill. Here I am: the source. Direct to the public. I may not be as widely read but I can be found by anyone who looks. And my comments are as much published as anything else on the web. I've even spotted peripheral nodes on the "rumor tree" and responded directly.

Thus in my own work I see clear evidence that the blog is open to instant correction by the very sources of information. The press, however, is a closed peer-to-peer chain of transmission and mutation; a true rumor mill.