i’ll probably be referencing this a lot
February 4, 2008
The more I think about the Web 2.0 movement, the more nervous and scared I get. I read this book once, entitle The Cult of the Amateur. Essentially the book is a former Web 2.0 insiders view on the negative possibilities of the movement. It’s quite a compelling read, and I suggest it to anyone, internet junkie or not.
Here’s a bit from the first chapter of the book:
Look at Wikipedia, the Internet’s largest cathedral of knowledge. Unlike editors at a professional encyclopedia like Britannica, the identity of the volunteer editors on Wikipedia is unknown. These citizen editors out-edit other citizen editors in defining, redefining, and then reredefining truth, sometimes hundreds of time a day. Take, for example, July 5, 2006, the day Enron embezzler Ken Lay died. At 10:06 A.M. that day, the Wikipedia entry of Ken Lay said he died of an “apparent suicide.” Two minutes later, it said the cause of death was an “apparent heart attack.” Then at 10:11 A.M., Wikipedia reported that the “guilt of ruining so many lives finally led him to his suicide.” At 10:12 A.M., we were back to the massive coronary causing Lay’s demise.
One problem with websites like Wikipedia is the lack of credible journalism. The sources of information, if any, are most likely other blogs, and if there is a legitimate source, bloggers tend to either steal the content and not quote the source, or they do cite the source properly, but it’s still simply a repost. This calls into question: what’s the point of a blog?
Most blogs that are popular are news-related blogs. These blogs get their information from established, credible news sources, like The New York Times. The problem is that these blogs, while reposting these news items and spreading them to a degree, are not helping out the source at all. In fact, they are stealing the information from the source in a sense. Lots of people get their news from blogs, and they do not realize where the blogger got the information. Also, blogs had led to a decrease in readers for their sources. So what happens when bloggers have sucked all of the life out of their sources, and the sources have to quit or change dramatically? Read the book.
February 4, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Something that restored my faith (trust? non-hate?) in Wikipedia is the following video:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/umlaut.html
My impression is that good intentions reign. After all, I’m much more cynical about the influence of money, and there’s little of that in this world of anonymous journalism.
February 4, 2008 at 7:34 pm
A valid point. The influence of money is most certainly a factor in professional journalism, although to what degree, I do not know. I don’t want everyone to think I’m anti blogs or wikis. I think they definitely have their place. CMS software and wikis are crucial to the development of free software and information, which I do believe strongly in, but there are certain things that I believe this form of technology may in fact do more harm than good. I believe that Wikipedia is a good source of information for simple, more general knowledge things, sort of like the things you’d need to know in order to be good at trivia. But there are other topics that I think it isn’t appropriate for.
For instance, the entry on global warming. One of the main contributors to the entry on global warming was a 14 year old child, and when the entry was repeatedly changed by another Wikipedia member, the child complained and got the other member banned. The other member was a scientist who studies global warming professionally, and was changing the inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the child’s entry. This all-united front can have strongly negative effects depending on the topic-at-hand.
All I’m suggesting is to be cautious. Don’t put too much stock into open repositories of information like Wikipedia. They have their place, but their place isn’t everywhere.