wikinomics talks about history

Here is a link to the Wikinomics website, specifically to an article written by Jeff DeChambeau titled Wikipedia: Living History for the Rest of Time?

http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/index.php/2008/08/02/wikipedia-living-history-for-the-rest-of-time/

Jeff talks about how in the future Wikipedia may be used as a reference for insight into today's societies and cultures and touches on some of the same points that I have made regarding history and Wikipedia; namely that because of the transparency of the articles (through the discussion pages) future historians will be able to track the evolution of debate on a topic.

Wikinomics.com is a really good site and if you are interested in this topic the I would recommend you check it out.

Wikipedia cited in legal document

I was just reading about a Connecticut Justice has been revealed to have cited Wikipedia in an 84 page opinion piece about legalizing same-sex marriages. He used Wikipedia to identify the number of openly gay members of congress and now it is causing a stir. Should Wikipedia be allowed to be used in our legal system? Should Wikipedia be allowed to be used in our education system? The fact that this Justice has the foresight to support same-sex marriages indicates that his/her opinion on the collaboration occurring online in Wikipedia is that it is not as haphazard and unreliable as some would have you believe.

When will people stop gasping at the fact that Wikipedia is commonly used as a source and instead focus their energies into making sure that it stands up to whatever expectations they have of such a system? Through their collaboration the system improves. Nothing is achieved through turning up your nose.

(Link to article: http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/25746)

Watered down Wikipedia: political correctness, history and consensus

In an earlier post I discussed issues around recorded history and I want to elaborate on that a bit because it really is one of the core topics of this blog.
Essentially, I think that the internet, and Web 2.0 in particular, has the potential to allow us the opportunity to lessen the chances of a skewed, biased or manipulated version of historical events being passed on or taught as fact. I was born and raised in South Africa, and I know that some of what I was taught at school in regards to the countries’ history and colonisation had been positioned in my school textbooks to ensure that we never entertained questions about South Africas colonisation and the methods undertaken to achieve it. I am sure this is the same in many Western countries. Colonisation was all about ‘discovery’ and ‘adventure’ and those who embarked in those initial journeys were ‘brave’ and ‘heroes’. And sure, they probably were pretty brave and for them it was all about the adventure and discovery, but at no stage was I taught about that period of history from an indigenous perspective. If I had been, would it have framed my ideas about the political strife of the country in a different way?

I think you can probably see what I am getting at here; that the ability to debate matters of historical relevance in order to come to a consensus on them (even if the consensus is a differentiation of opinion) on a platform which allows all with access to see the debate in its entirety would, a) mean that the accounts of that event were as close to the truth as possible and, b) that general opinions on certain issues stemmed from a place of truthful representation of those events, rather than a biased or false one. The results of this I could dream about for days, but, of course, no system exists at present which could really initiate or mobilise this kind of discourse. Once again, the closest thing we have at present is Wikipedia and although it goes far to lay the groundwork it is also at present very young and somewhat flawed. For example, how many Wikipedia users actually read the discussion pages behind an article. Probably this is dependant on the kind of information sought, but this leads me to my next set of questions: how can users rest assured that they are able to retrieve all the relevant information from Wikipedia when with mass collaboration comes debate and thus compromise as to what is the truth or is relevant and what is not? The risk for the egalitarian model of the Internet as I have laid out is then that “collaborative intelligence leads to bland compromises; collective intelligence to populism and even to tunnel vision.” According to Marijn de Waal, the results “may be democratic but it is not good for society or for the quality of cultural production”.

I wrote an essay on this recently and used this as my example: During the late 20th Century a common place topic to joke about was how political correctness had become so pertinent to society that everything in the end had been watered down so much so as not to offend anyone, to an almost ridiculous point. The classic example of this is the attempts at banning and reediting of Enid Blyton’s Noddy books as a result of the main characters close friendship with Big Ears, which some took to imply a covert homosexual relationship. The subsequent Noddy publications and television shows therefore carefully omit subject matter which could be read as (homo)sexual, namely instances where Big Ears might have stayed the night at Noddy’s house. For a child, sleep over’s are an innocent part of growing up and is important for personal confidence and social bonding, and yet in this context that activity was omitted from the work due to the existence of a possibility that it may be perceived the wrong way.

The ‘Noddy’ page on Wikipedia fails to mention the controversy surrounding Big Ears and only briefly refers to the well-known controversy involving the black-faced Golliwogg characters, which happened in the early 1960s. Through attempts to be neutral the article fails to properly address an instance of social importance (an open discussion of media represented racism during the civil rights movement), instead stating that the inclusion of the Golliwoggs dolls were omitted due to the characters “fall[ing] out of favour” – falling out of favour with whom is not addressed.

Wikipedia’s ‘Noddy’ page concerns itself with description and reserves the ideological discussions for the ‘discussions’ page. The success of Wikipedia in embodying Charles Leadbetters We-Think model relies heavily on the inclusion of a discussion board for each topic and the transparency of the platform itself, as mentioned in an earlier post. Although a seemingly irrelevant example in the context of historical events and accuracy of representation, it illustrates the point that de Waal makes above and highlights the infancy in the development of such an online system.

Although obviously flawed, Wikipedia offers us a preview of what should be expected from Web 2.0 and the future of the Internet. It offers us a taste of what is possible when (almost) everyone is forwarded the opportunity to input their knowledge into a system which records all human knowledge; in effect participating in a massive discussion about the truth of our collective histories, while at the same time debating with and educating each other. Through these platforms is the potential for history to be no longer written only by the winners.

Journeyman Pictures

This isn't really that relevant to my blog topic but I wanted to post a link anyway.

Journeyman pictures "is London's leading independent distributor of topical news features, documentaries and footage. We're like a video encyclopedia of the world".

It's a really interesting site; plenty about the current financial crisis and its social effects. I just watched three of their documentaries in a row and am very impressed. I would recommend you go check it out.

http://nz.youtube.com/user/journeymanpictures
or their website
www.journeyman.tv

Professor Wikipedia

I just watched this skit done by the College Humor crew which highlights and jokes about some of the problems with Wikipedia. A bit stagey but still funny and on some points quite apt.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1830262

Did you watch it? What do you think about some of the points it raised?

Wikipedia is interesting

This is a great way to spend twenty minutes. It really shows how Wikipedia can surpass a traditional encyclopaedia in regards to quantity of content because in Wikipedia the 'list of historical elephants' is just as relevant as, say, the history of rock n roll.

'36 Reasons why Wikipedia is the Greatest Invention in Human History'

http://www.enotes.com/blogs/wikipedia/2008-09/36-reasons-wikipedia-is-the-greatest-invention-in-human-history/#comment-2123

Collective Journalism

I haven't done much researching into this, but I was just reading this article about a guy who was writing about Wikipedia for an article in Esquire magazine and put a draft of the article (with intentional typos and falsities) on Wikipedia. Within 24 hours the typos had been fixed and the article had been edited into a cohesive and publishable article.

This got me thinking about collective journalism and whether such a thing could exist. Of course, a newspaper is an example of collective journalism but what I mean more a collective collaboration on one article in particular. If you were the authority on something, say you were at an event, you could collaborate with others to write an article about that event. So basically the Wikipedia structure, applied to the news media.

Does anything like this exist?

(link to article: http://news.cnet.com/Esquire-wikis-article-on-Wikipedia/2100-1038_3-5885171.html?tag=mncol;txt)

Update: after about ten seconds searching I found: www.collectivejouralism.org but it seems like a really underdeveloped and generally pretty bad site.
Anyone know of any genuine collective journalism sites? Or does Wikipedia already fulfill that role?

The return of the Community

Several theorists have discussed the complexities around ‘community’ and what changes may be in stall thanks to technological and communications advances, Web 2.0 in particular. At the base of some of the theories is the belief that, thanks to Industrialisation and the subsequent shift from towns to cities, the ways in which communities exist and function has changed dramatically. At the same time – and somewhat as a result of this shift - the ways in which information is passed on and discussed has changed dramatically, in particular in the Media. This kind of ties into my last post in which I discussed the value of knowledge vs the value of intelligence, where I ascertained that using the term ‘knowledge’ as opposed to ‘intelligence’ was preferable as the latter could be considered exclusionary.

Knowledge includes practical information about skills, such as cooking and carpentry, growing food and sewing clothing, and can all be included under the ‘collective knowledge’ umbrella. This ‘umbrella’ is what Charles Leadbetter (2008), the father of ‘We-Think’ theory - refers to as a “common pool of resources”. He likens the activity of collaborating in order to create this common pool of resources to the days of villages and smaller, localised communities. Web 2.0 currently functions in the spirit of sharing, where information and knowledge are not necessarily thought of as commodities.

This naturally harbours questions around free labour and, of course, the common big issue: ownership (which I have talked about and will talk about more). But this brings me to my next point, or more so, Leadbetters next point, in which he claims that the Internet, specifically Web 2.0, has the potential to remind us that “sharing and mutuality can be as effective a base for productive activity as private ownership”. So not only are we seeing a shift towards a unanimous spirit of sharing information for communal rather than monetary gain, but this shift has the potential to highlight the benefits of a focus on “productive activity” rather than private ownership. This has the potential to reinvigorate that sense of community that is said to have been lost during Industrialisation and to take focus off corporate structures’ attempts at defining society.

And the vital element with reinvigorating that sense of community seems to be the Internet and its subsequent development away from those commercial and political interests which have dominated our traditional entertainment media to date. Rheingold continues in this vein: ‘[t]he technology of personal telecommunications and the rich, diverse BBS (computer Bulletin Board System) culture that is growing on every continent today were created by citizens, not doomsday weapon designers or corporate researchers”.

For those of us who are weary of the corporations, who don’t have faith in the politicians, who doubt the media, and who question the actions of the military, the Internet offers a platform for a different type of interaction where I can discuss these ideas with other people who share the same scepticisms as me.

I can now talk to you. And more importantly, you can talk back.

Ivan Illich says..

And I agree with him; "I believe a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our engendering a lifestyle which will enable us to be spontaneous, independent, yet related to each other, rather than maintaining a lifestyle which only allows us to produce and consume."

Knowledge vs Intelligence

The core intention for Wikipedia is the collection and publication of knowledge in a bid to become the host of “the sum of all human knowledge” (as Jimmy Wales described it). When discussing the intricacies of a system of collective participation like Wikipedia, is it better to talk about ‘collective intelligence’ or ‘collective knowledge’?

When specifically discussing fact or historical record (bearing in mind a desire to move away from a system where people learn from the elites) ‘collective intelligence’ again implies a hierarchy and the overarching question has to be: who is ‘intelligent’? Furthermore, how is that intelligence classified? Really, everyone harbours some knowledge (maybe about sewing, or painting, counselling, or the traffic flows on a Monday, etc) and ‘intelligence’ discounts that fact. In Pierre Levy’s words: “No one knows everything but everyone knows something”.

Also, ‘intelligence’ implies competition and a ranking (IQ) for the benefit of whoever who is deemed intelligent and that intelligence in turn gives them social capital. ‘Knowledge’, however, is not judged on education qualifications and incites notions of sharing information in a communal sense for the benefit of everyone. In other words, knowledge is passed on – intelligence is not. Knowledge brings with it a sense of community, whereas intelligence is an individual feature. This all ties in with discussions around Web 2.0 and the spirit of ‘sharing’ that underlines it; I will discuss this more in a future post.

Communities, Networks and Niche Societies

One common area addressed in media studies is that of a move towards a more niche media, or rather one that focuses on many niche markets as opposed to one or a few mass ones. Television channels have branched off to cater for smaller markets with specified interests (the documentary channel, the news channel, the golf channel, etc). The Internet has never really operated in any other way, other than to cater for whatever niche exists, no matter how small the group it is catering to. With these disparate niche groups, networking becomes key in connecting those who are part of that niche but have not yet found it. This networking of niche groups s in turn creating different kinds of communities (which I will discuss further in a future post).

My point here really is to highlight the change not in user behaviour, but moreso in the way the media itself functions as a result of these shifts. Through user power (as gifted to us by the Internet and Web 2.0 in particular) and mass collaboration of interest groups we can start to see a move away from the traditional one-way flow of the media towards a new environment of “mediation” (Lievrouw & Livingstone, 2008), where information can be produced, distributed and consumed by anyone anywhere and the tools are there only to mediate. Taking this further, where television once talked at us from an external point of view, now, through the Internet, we can talk to each other. No longer satisfied with being addressed as one mass society, media users are now demanding, and are getting, new networked (niche) societies. This changes the ebbs and flows of the Internet at the same time as, “mediation […] enables, supports or facilitates communicative action and representation”.

The development of niche networks and niche media, however, does not spell the end for mainstream media, as pointed out by Henry Jenkins, because the niche media, at least for the moment, still needs to be validated by the mainstream media. For example, a blog may raise an issue but it is only when the mainstream media highlight this issue that change occurs. As Jenkins says, “[b]roadcasting provides the common culture, and the Web offers more localized channels for responding to that culture”. This is a very interesting point to me but I would like to hear some of your thoughts about it.

Learning

I read this interesting piece online titled ‘Learning in a Digital World’ Mitchell Resnick from his book Rethinking Learning in the Digital Age (2002, find link below) which ties in with my earlier post regarding history and truth. He has some interesting things to say about the ways in which we educate and learn, and the new possibilities available to us with the ever evolving ‘technoscape’. In particular, new digital technologies (and the constant decrease of associated costs) has paved the way for the arrival of what Resnick refers to as the “learning revolution”. Resnick addresses in particular issues around the education systems and suggests that old methods of educating are no longer relevant in this new digital age. However, although new technologies make the “learning revolution” possible, it “certainly does not guarantee it” due to those technologies being utilized only to “reinforce outmoded approaches to learning” as opposed to discovering and embracing new methods of education.

Resnick sees this as resulting from how we think about the relationship between education and technology. He says that if presented with the Internet, a television and some finger-paint and asked which one is the odd one out, the commonsense answer would surely be the finger paint, for all the obvious reasons. But he sees a higher value in thinking of computer-based interaction more like finger paint and less like television, in that it does not speak at us, but interpellates us to be creative while using the technology as a tool, similar in essence to how we would use finger paint. The underlying issue for Resnick is how we perceive education and our ideas about how people learn. He refers to discussions regarding the contemporary era and a notion that we (humans) are currently moving out of the Industrial era and into a new Information era (also referred to as the Knowledge era), but Retnick sees more value in thinking about it as the Creative era. Whatever the label, we are in a new era where individuals seek out education and information in their specific areas of interest, at their discretion.

It is easy to see where Wikipedia fits into the discussion as it offers users the opportunity to not only discover information but to engage with it on a much more complex level. For example, users can question the validity of information presented on the website and a discussion about it can be held on the ‘discussion’ tab of each page. This level of involvement goes well beyond the manner of involvement users have with, for example, a traditional encyclopaedia. And the transparency of the methods and discussions around defining a truth means that users are equipped to make educated decisions on the accuracy and validity of a fact presented.

However, not all (or probably very many for that matter) users look at the discussions and debates surrounding a topic and many would come away thinking a fact was an absolute truth without realizing that a tense debate was occurring on the tab beneath. This then begs the question; how many users read the discussions surrounding the facts they are finding out? Have you ever looked at a discussion tab? Have you ever participated in a discussion or debate on Wikipedia? Furthermore, this leads me to ask; do Wikipedias gatekeepers have the authority to edit discussion pages? Well, actually the truth is that all users can edit the discussion pages……

If the only transparency of Wikipedia is achieved through the ‘history’ tab of a topic, then is that the same level of transparency as if the discussion pages were only edited in the deletion of abusive language and content? These topics and questions will be explored in future posts but I’d love to hear what you think about it..

Link: http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/

History is Written by the Winners

George Orwell once wrote in reference to the Spanish Civil War, “the history of the war will consist quite largely of 'facts' which millions of people now living know to be lies”, and in the end, “[those] lie[s] will have become truth.” In the same vein, Napoleon Bonaparte is quoted as having said “history is a lie contested by no one”.

The reality is that the history we (in the West) know has more likely than not been written in bias with certain perspectives being eliminated from the discourse.
Think for a moment about why the majority of us in colonised countries don’t feel guilty about the reality of the actions of our ancestors and our colonial pasts? Probably because we learn at school that Christopher Columbus was a brave explorer, who set out to conquer the world in the face of superstition and adversity. Probably for the same reasons that we are taught that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone; because, in the end, history is written by the winners.

As Orwell makes clear with the above statement, lies over time become truth, especially when those lies relate to historical events. The lies get written down, published in textbooks and then taught to the ensuing generations. Again, thinking about the educations we received and the facts we were taught as facts , questions emerge about what we know to be the truth. Because, Alexander Graham Bell did invent the telephone, didn’t he?

I was reading an essay posted up to www.archaeologyonline.net by Ricardo Palleres in which he states: “It very well may come to pass in the near future that those concerned with truth will wrestle primarily with history rather than science. The obvious reason for this is that, in the words of Dr. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, author of Theology and the World's Religious History, "Humanity is more important than things. The truth about humanity is of a higher order than the truth about things.".”

Knol

Released by Google at the start of the year, knol is kind of like Wikipedia but with a few key differences; Google have no editorial power and the focus is on the authors of the content.
In their own words:
"A knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic."
so the website is supposedly a culmination of 'knowl-edge' written by authoritative and identifiable sources. Go check it out for yourself, here's the address:
knol.google.com
In my opinion, due to the focus on the author approach many people seem to approach it more like a blog than a space to input authoritative information. For example, I typed in 'America' to see what kinds of results it gave me: would it ask if I meant North America or South America, for example. The search results were a list similar to a Google search (surprise), the first result was 'Hunting in America' and the second was an entry titled 'America', which was the one I looked at. It is an entry written by a guy, John Smith, who is an web developer, which basically lists all the copyrights held which begin with 'America' or 'American' that he thinks summarizes America, gives a "snapshot of what America is".
And the site has been up since January.
I wonder if one of the problems with it is (ironically) a lack of authority, or an editor/s? Or maybe just a lack of input? I don't really understand how this will ever be able to be looked at as an authoritative source of information. I can understand the idea that an authoritative person will write an entry on a topic which they know about, but what about all the John Smiths who write entries which are merely musings? Doesn't that just undermine what they are trying to do?
It does, however, go far to exemplify how important it is for the success of Wikipedia that SO many people use it.

WikiScanner

Here is a great new tool created by a scholar named Virgil Griffith called Wiki Scanner. Basically it tracks the IPS addresses of anonymous edits on Wikipedia back to their registered authors (for public IPSs, like in government buildings etc). The results, as you can imagine, are quite revealing with the largest portion of edits done by factions of the American Military. It's not all quite so sinister, however, for example with one edit - which was traced back to the FBI headquarters - which was editing the lyrics for one of the songs sung in the musical episode of Buffy.

A very interesting tool which I will be looking closely at for my research into Wikipedia.

http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/

Go and check it out and see which corporations are editing Wikipedia pages in their favour.

wikipedia and truth documentary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMSinyx_Ab0
Here is a link to a 48 minute documentary on Wikipedia and Truth.
It makes some interesting points but doesn't quite cover enough ground in the areas that I'm interested in.

New Media Audiences

The contemporary media environment has shifted dramatically in regards to the production, dissemination and reception of information. In terms of ‘audience’ media consumption, that shift has precipitated a move towards a complex mediascape where individuals now have a huge amount of influence over what media they engage with and when, or how often – in effect rendering them no longer ‘audiences’ but what Axel Bruns calls “prod-users”. Lievrouw and Livingstone address this shift from the perspective of traditional media modes of operation towards one where its focus is on ‘mediation’ – I will look at this in more detail in a future post.

With the arrival of new media technology, specifically the internet and the development of Web 2.0, people are now enabled and encouraged to seek out and furthermore question information in a much less traditional manner than before. This is through offering forums and spaces where public discussions and debates not only take place, but are also recorded in their entirety and displayed for anyone who is interested to see. This transparency is a vital key to the longevity of a system whose goals are to host and publish open discourses on just about every topic as it exemplifies the level of inclusion that applies to all users, not just the creators.

Charles Leadbetter identifies a growing social desire for explicit control over our own media diets. He summarises this social development:
In the we-think economy people don’t just want services and goods delivered to them. They also want tools so that they can take part in places in which to play share, debate with others.
Web 2.0 offers Internet users the facilities through which they are able to participate in a variety of online communities. Different platforms available through the Web 2.0 services vary according to user behaviour and expectations of that platform. For example, blogs are designed around contribution, of both the blog owner and its readership; social networks are designed to do exactly that: to network people, to connect them. Leadbetter states that “for sustained creative collaboration to take off” another tool is needed: at present that tool is the wiki. The power of the wiki lies in the power of the collective. What wiki’s allow, is for people to co-operate with the goal of “summaris[ing] a debate or amass[ing] a body of information and creat[ing] documents with a collective author.” This change in approach has seen massive growth with the arrival of Web 2.0 platforms; blogs, networking sites and, of course, Wikipedia. With Wikipedia, users are automatically placed in a position of authority, asserting this new produser approach for its users and enabling them to participate fully in the activities taking place within it.

The tone of the media is shifting (or has shifted, really) – people don’t like being told anymore, they want to find and then decide for themselves. They want to participate and engage and make sure that they are not being duped as a result of hidden interests. With this shift comes a changing face for ‘audiences’, one where they are respected for their individuality and knowledge and not talked at in ways which are designed to relieve them of their time and money.

Some thoughts

I think that like most people I have a love/hate relationship with the media. I know it manipulates people into believing that boots look good over skinny jeans and that ugly men are attractive just because they're famous. I am aware that the news media blatantly omit (and put emphasis on) what they want in the interest of selling more papers. Television advertising talks down to their audiences in the most patronizing ways, trying desperately to reinvent their products in order to sell more to consumers who didn't need it in the first place. The main newspaper of the capital city of New Zealand, the Dominion Post, has recently shrunk their world section to cover 2 - 3 pages, on a good day, and those pages are often riddled with advertising. And they still call themselves a newspaper.

But then there is the internet. I love the internet. I remember many conversations with friends about the potential for the internet as a means of bettering the world; the potential behind the unhindered spread of information; the potential to fully realise a true democracy. For example, would they ever allow online voting for government or local elections? If they allowed that then maybe they would have forums where people could vote on other issues, such as policy changes and the spending of tax payers money. I guess the joke is that you can submit your thoughts and opinions to the council on certain matters, when they call for submissions; you can even do this online. The difference between what my friends and I were musing about seems to me to come down to participation and transparency. Your opinion is not actively sought and it takes time and effort to participate, with no guarantee of a favorable outcome. You cannot read other submitters' opinions nor can you get a summary of the overall results. And after reading the submissions and taking them into account the councillors still get to decide on the matter at hand.

If there were a way for all those affected by a decision to have the chance to vote and/or state an opinion on a matter (the process of which was transparent and available for everyone to see) surely the best outcome for those affected would be reached by debate and consensus. And in the same vein, if everyone were able to participate in a debate about any topic known to man, surely eventually the ultimate truth of that topic would be reached, regardless of whether or not everyone agreed with each other, as long as the process of debate was transparent. The only way to arrive at an ultimate truth (within the limitations of human knowledge) is to have accessible all the knowledge and the ways in which a consensus as to the truth of that knowledge was reached. The obvious thing to bring into this topic here is the Web 2.0 services that are available through the internet such as blogs and more specifically wikis.

Wikipedia is a good, albeit limited, example of the potential of a site for holding an open discourse with the ultimate goal of arriving as close to the truth as possible on as many topics as possible. Traditional encyclopedias (Brittanica, etc) are taken as ultimate truths but those involved in writing them, we are assured, are very well informed. And therein lies the problem for many people with Wikipedia - it is not guaranteed that the information we are reading is put forward by an educated or well informed person. At university you are never allowed to use Wikipedia as a reference or source and it seems common place to doubt information presented on the site, mostly thanks to the general air of paranoia about uninformed people writing rubbish to mislead everyone. And yet within the legal system it goes unquestioned that all it takes to decide what the truth of a matter is is twelve people and as much time as they need to debate and arrive at a consensus.

Let's talk about Wikipedia

Wikipedia is an open-source free encyclopaedia, which relies on the participation (in the practical form of writing and editing information) of its users to keep it up-to-date and relevant. Although it is easy to identify the flaws of such an online service (some of which I will discuss in detail in future posts), I think it is also pertinent to assess the value of Web 2.0 services like Wikipedia in relation to the potential of achieving a truthful global record of historical and social events. However, in order to address this topic it is pertinent to discuss several of the issues and theories surrounding a service such as Wikipedia.

The predominant questions that arises when addressing issues centred around Web 2.0, and Wikipedia in particular, focus on access, equality and education as well as the notion of collective intelligence. Services such as Wikipedia rely on user interaction and participation to fill its database. Users are encouraged to write about what they know, and edit previous articles in a bid to build a database of information: “the sum of all human knowledge”. Not surprisingly, one issue for the general populous accepting this kind of ‘information evolution’ is authority – who has the authority on that information and where did they get the authority (or authoritative information) from? After all, as Martijn de Waal points out, “[e]very link from a blog to an article in a newspaper raises that paper’s ‘page ranking’ in Google and thus its visibility and potential authority”. This unintentional voting system works against the valid “systems of collaborative intelligence” which predisposes that all users will “work together on the basis of equality to create meaning and compile knowledge”.

According to Stephen Lax (2007), user-inequality is a key flaw for the egalitarian ideals of the internet and Web 2.0 as expressed by Charles Leadbetter (We-Think) and de Waal. Aside from access issues, dubbed ‘the digital divide’ (as in not everyone has access to the internet, and the system privileges those who do and rewards them for it), Lax maintains that new information and communications technologies (ICTs) are not the answer to bring about a more equal society. Instead, the Internet merely reflects the general material inequalities which currently separate the rich from the poor, the fed from the starving and the privileged from the underprivileged.

However, Pierre Levy (2001) disagrees with Lax when he argues that, likewise with the television then the film industry, that the potential for the internet to exclude some and include others is not as big a problem as other deem it to be. Not everyone has access to a telephone and corporations make massive profits off the communications industry (and regulate it) but that certainly does not make the case against them, is Levy’s argument. He goes further to point out that it is “not the poor who are “against the Internet, but those whose power, privilege (especially cultural), and monopoly are threatened by the emergence of new configurations of the communications infrastructure”. Here Levy is hinting at the power structures which are in place and prove more of a threat to equality than the existence of new communications technologies.

Critics and sceptics of Wikipedia also cite vandalism as a concerning factor as to the reliability of the information on the website – how can users tell that the information they seek has not been written by a vandal trying to misinform? Users assume, and granted are sometimes right, that people will abuse the system through vandalism. However, this I liken to a school goer defacing an encyclopaedia in the library. At first it is gratifying and fun to write vile words and draw crude pictures on the pages but eventually it becomes boring because the environment they are in (the library) always maintains the same purpose and the librarians diligently erases all the vandalism as it occurs. It becomes tiresome to continually vandalise something where other people have a vested interest in returning it to its original (or improved) state. With Wikipedia, the hope then is that eventually the vandals will become bored and move on to another forum for (or form of) expression. Charles Leadbetter, the father of We-Think theory, has faith in this eventually happening, in believing that, given time, “a collective consensus will emerge”.

Beyond vandalism, access and equality, huge concerns still exist around the quality of the information (see Lax: 2007) as a result of the contributions not being written by those in authoritative positions (a graduated historian writing about history, for example). Martijn de Waal discussed these concerns through looking at the current shift from the expert paradigm (“in which experts accredited by official bodies determine what is true and what is not”) towards a more meritocratic system (where what counts is proven expertise rather than institutional embeddedness”). De Waal claims that “the position of traditional experts is being undermined by ‘collaborative intelligence’ systems such as Wikipedia in which media users cooperate in an egalitarian manner”. Through the demise of the expert paradigm, according to de Waal, we can expect to see “a new balance” gradually emerging; in other words, “new collective forms of canonisation” . Furthermore, Leadbetter states that “as people become dependant on the expert knowledge of professionals they loose faith in their own capacity to act”, highlighting the importance of ongoing social engagement in relevant discussions through platforms such as Wikipedia.

This is a complex topic and through this blog I hope to explore it as fully as I can. One important aspect of my discussion here is reader participation, so, if you have any thoughts on the topics covered here I would like to hear it: you have a voice, use it!