Truth is quite a separate thing from opinion. To calculate 24 plus 36, would you ask 100 people for their answers and take the average? We have all heard multiple diverging descriptions of a single event enough times to realise that even with the truth in plain sight, people report things wrongly or are hopelessly prejudicial. Sadly, you have to be trained to observe accurately. Opinion, however, is cheap to produce and cannot be countered.
A very worthwhile new documentary entitled The Truth According To Wikipedia brings up some interesting points about the wisdom of crowds, and the quality of information. One accusation levelled at that the founders of the webs Encyclopedia is that they are libertarians. And its true that the ageing hippies responsible for the current state of the internet are probably the digital equivalent of a survivalist state militia who hate authority, formality and control.
The author Andrew Keen gets a reasonable amount of time in the film to expound his 'elitist' views. For him, experts are more right than amateurs and the blogosphere weakens quality media. The opposite view may lightly be characterised by the Zulu term ubuntu - all information lacks meaning in isolation and all views should be equally respected. As facts have to be placed in a useful human context - there is lots of "truth" that won't help anyone live - there should be value to local truth as well as just absolute truth. It may be Einsteins universe, but we live in Newtons world.
Not all of the films polemic hits Wikipedia accurately. Where an aggregate medium excels is in the collection of knowledge. While no amount of opinions can somehow coalesce into truth, capturing the knowledge of millions creates a dynamic picture of any topic. In most situations you don't actually require the sharply focused truth, just a helpful sketch. And the chaotic democracy of Wikipedia is actually held together by some fairly sensible sentinels - whose access looks suspiciously hierarchical. Another saving grace is that a vandals attention span is mercifully short.
Keen's point is more relevant when examining how (western) society is fragmenting into millions of personal self interested bubbles. He refers to digital narcissism when talking about internet culture. Even if the bubbles collaborate on occasion with other bubbles they know, its hard to build up knowledge if everyone starts from their own position. Equal access to information leads to all information being equal. So importance on the internet is just popularity, and thus quality loses meaning.
The combination of pure democracy and anonymity seems to have very specific strengths and weaknesses. Wikipedia may represent both of sides. Whether the web can assert quality or just increase fracture should become apparent in the next few years. At the moment, it could be Lord of the Flies.
1 comments:
There were some very good points in that movie, from both sides. The fact that these days everyone's a writer, a publisher, a generator of content, makes a big difference to the structure and the fragmentation of information today and it will b e interesting to see how that evolves over time.
Still, I can't help but think that it's the same old situation where the tool is good but the use of it is bad. In the past few decades, people have suffered from the "if it's on TV it must be true" condition. We're now going through a "if it's on Wikipedia it must be true phase". But it's all about using each information source to its strength. If I want to find out some trivia about the new hot film or album coming out, Wikipedia is the best place to capture ans share the collective "popular" knowledge on that kind of thing. If on the other hand use Wikipedia as the source of truth for what jabs I should get before I visit country X, it's clearly the wrong source for that information and I deserve what's coming to me.
But I usually fail to be impressed by predictions of doom about this kind of social phenomena. The useful things will stay, and the crap will disappear, as it always does.
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