Steinberger, Mike. "We're all wine critics now: How the Internet has democratized drinking." Slate. 15 Sept. 2009. Slate Magazine. 27 Sept. 2009. http://www.slate.com/id/2229518/pagenum/all/#p2

This article discusses how the profession of expert wine taster is disappearing because sharing your opinion is becoming easier with the internet. Now, people aren't really trusting just one critic. They are exploring different websites and archives to discuss and rate different wines. One of these archives is "CellarTracker," which is a website with "a database of more than 1 million tasting notes." Although, "CellarTracker hasn't usurped professional wine critics," it is starting to make sharing your opinion easier. It is also "forcing them[wine critics] to justify their existences to an unprecedented degree," and this seems logical. If you can read many reviews for a wine, from many different people, why should one "expert's" opinion count over these views. "We are moving from a monologue to a dialogue." More and more people are contributing, and every person that contributes debunks official wine critics more and more. A good example of this is wine expert, Jay Miller, who gave a "Sierra Carche" a 96 score, when in all reality it was "terrible." "A decade ago . . . they [consumers] would have given his [Miller's] palate the benefit of the doubt. Now, though, consumers are far more confident in their own tastes and are no longer quite so deferential."

I don't care about wine. I won't ever care about wine. But I think this article represents the switch from "a monologue to a dialogue." This is occurring more and more in different areas of life. People are sharing their opinion on different subjects and expertise doesn't matter, in some areas. I think that this switch is good for society in some facets, but bad in other facets. I think that in areas like wine tasting it is good because "t is a matter of taste, and taste differs from one person to the next." But in some areas, such as in politics or science, I don't think that the masses should overrule the experts. This is because in some areas experts have specialized knowledge not available to regular people and really do know what they are talking about. They are educated in the subject matter. With anyone being able to share their feelings, someone who isn't educated in the subject matter can bring a lot of people to their side, if they have a convincing voice.

Customer Service via Internet

Farhad, Manjoo. Tweeting Avengers. 1 Sep. 2009. Slate Magazine. 13 Sep. 2009 .

In this article, Manjoo Farhad discusses the increasing use of Twitter and other websites to file complaints against different companies. Bob Garfield, founder of comcastmusdie.com, which later became Customer-Circus.com, declared "war" against Comcast after a mess with customer service. After he made this website, Comcast quickly responded to his complaint and to many other dissatisfied customers that posted concerns on this website. Comcast now has a "team [set up] to respond quickly to online grumbling." There is a similar example of this with Heather Armstrong, who complained about a Maytag washing machine she was having problems with. After tweeting, "DON'T EVER BUY A MAYTAG," a company executive hastily sent her the parts necessary to fix her washing machine. A competing company even sent her a new washing machine. Both these examples happened after long exchanges with customer service. So what exactly makes a tweet so much more powerful than a phone call? It is the ability to communicate a message to the masses, but it also may help that both these examples involve highly influential internet figures. This success doesn't necessarily translate to a regular consumer. The chance of being noticed by a company increases with the amount of "followers" one has.

I remember working at a call center the summer of my ninth grade year. I didn't work in customer service, but sometimes I would need to take customer service calls. When this happened, oftentimes, there wasn't much I could do to help the customer because it involved something much higher than me. This article is good because it shows that people are getting helped by filing complaints on different websites. It is quite similar to a call center in some ways, though, because for the regular person who doesn't have many "friends or followers," it probably doesn't make a difference if they post something online. It may influence some friends, but unless their complaint reaches a large market then the company won't really take much concern. This article also concerns me, however, because most people don't even think to post complaints on a website. Does this mean that eventually people who don't use the internet won't get served? Is this the beginning of the end for customer service by phone and the beginning of it by internet? Companies like Comcast and Maytag will answer complaints on line, but other companies like United Airlines and Directv don't answer complaints, even from people with a lot of internet influence. This shows that there is still a way to go till customer service is all online, if it ever will be, but it is a possibility that someday it will be. And right now, maybe it is a good think that both people can use both mediums to get help and answers from companies.