Knowledge for the Masses, by the Masses
cn | 15 January, 2007 23:49Over the past months and year or so I've been watching with mild discomfort the growth of information by the masses. The most popular and well-known example of this is Wikipedia - an online encyclopedia, the content of which is all created by users of the Internet, which means anyone can submit. There are certain controls on the site, like editors who constantly check and edit submitted content, but even the editors are simply 'expert reviewers' within the specific subject (question would be, who are these expert reviewers and what are their qualifications?).
That said, I think the people at Wikipedia are doing a very solid job of quality control and they've created many stop-gaps to try and prevent flawed or inappropriate content. But what concerns me is the growth of a 'collective knows best' mentality in many circles. Even some mainstream journalistic magazines and websites are playing with inviting readers to contribute more - effectively making the journalist more like a content-chooser or moderator. ABC News recently asked users:
Witnessing the impact of global warming in your life?
ABC News wants to hear from you. We're currently producing a report on global warming and want to find out if you've seen differences in your daily environment that you think are caused by climate change.
...
Show us what you've seen. You can include video material of the environmental change, or simply tell your story via webcam. All the responses will be reviewed for possible inclusion in a two-hour special about potential global threats to humanity.
Is this modern journalism?
So why does this movement concern me? It assumes that knowledge held by the majority is in some way more accurate or 'righter'. If Columbus proposed that he world was round on Wikipedia during his time, would he have been drowned out? Perhaps.
Granted, the likes of Wikipedia might not suppress true scientific data or inquiry any more than that which occurred in general society during Columbus's time, but it seems to me that there is a strong pull towards information by the masses, which could change for the worse media, journalism, and the capacity of the general public to collect accurate data.
I recently came across a few articles addressing this issue that were quite interesting. Here's a bit from Jaron Lanier's article on Discover.com:
The Net has for the most part delivered happy surprises about human group potential. For instance, the rise of the Web in the early 1990s took place without leaders, ideology, advertising, commerce, or anything else other than a positive sensibility shared by millions of people. Who would have thought that was possible? It stands to reason, however, that the Net can also accentuate negative patterns of behavior or even bring about unforeseen social pathology. Over the last century, new media technologies have often become prominent as components of massive outbreaks of organized violence. For example, the Nazi regime was a major pioneer of television and cinematic propaganda.
Lanier has some interesting thoughts about what's going on and offers certain solutions that address the immediate issue (basically, mob thinking) and he has a much more extensive essay on the same topic here. Both are work a look.
I originally came to his essays via a short article on Scientific American's website that had a great example of how the mob mentality can truly rule Internet data.
Digg users will have already seen this post, which recounts what happened when an apparently well-meaning Digger left a comment that looked too much like spam for some other Diggers' liking. (Digg is a list of annotated bookmarks that vie for popularity as users vote either for (digg) or against (bury) them. A rich ecology of posted comments emerges in the process.) Long story short: a monumentally buried comment and lots of crank calls, according to the hapless "spammer's" web site.
[if the syntax of this quote doesn't quite make sense to you, the article explains the context a bit more].
JR Minkel, the author of this article, takes a more middle of the road (ie: less radical) stance on the general issue.
Personally, I think the issue is a reflection of the declining prominence of science and scientifically-arrived-at data in our culture, the current administration (and many past ones) being a leading force in the attempt to quash the data, the experts, and the objective minds in favor of anything that supports the favored agenda.
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Computers/Technology, Education, Ethics .
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