Sep 30 2010
Response (Week 5)
In response to my questions that I posted earlier…
1. Is it possible that we may be moving towards are more humanistic internet experience with a heavier focus on user customization and social collaboration? Is it possible that we are in the process and making the internet into a more humanistic experience?
I have to disagree with the doom and gloom predictions of Lanier. Although in the early days of the internet, there was much more rigidity and control with the “small group of software engineers” making most of the decisions but I believe that the entity of the internet has evolved beyond that. Now, more than ever, each individual user has a voice and a say in how something is presented or discussed online. People are interacting and collaborating with people all over the world, people that they would never have interacted with in the past. The internet is taking the things that make us human and amplifying them over a global network. I don’t see this as some form of insidious mechanization but rather an aid to bring us closer as a global human community. We are now able to build community, support causes, witness and report news, and build a better world through the collaborative nature of the internet. If this is not a more humanistic internet, I don’t know what is.
I feel that Henry Jenkins has a much better idea about what is going on. He compares our evolving internet culture of collaboration and mash-up “folklore” to going back to our roots as early humans who worked together and shared our stories for the purpose of others taking them and retelling them. In his view, we are becoming more “humanistic” internet users and the Web 2.0 ideas of collaboration are making it all possible.
2.) Although Wikipedia has its share of hooligans, is it possible that it is a site that is managed by a more or less “intelligent” crowd and can be seen as a more reliable source than some of the individual experts being “drowned out”? Is crowd sourcing really as negative as Lanier seems to believe? What about the positive effects of people putting their heads together to collectively solve problems?
As we discussed in class, Wikipedia is often a hotly debated topic. It’s an encyclopedia of knowledge that almost anyone can contribute to. It relies on the “wisdom of the crowds” and this can make many people, like Lanier, uneasy about its reliability. Lanier talks about how many of the voices of true “experts” are being drowned out by the influx of everyday people inputting information in such sites as Wikipedia. However, as we saw in class this “crowd” of people who create a page on Wikipedia is more reliable than we may think.
As we went through the evolution of the umlaut Wikipedia page we observed that even when one person tried to sabotage the information, other people (many who probably could be considered “experts”) were able to repair the damages with minutes. It is this global team of experts, in countless different fields, that keeps Wikipedia as reliable as possible. Instead of drowning out the experts, sites like Wikipedia are giving voices to experts who may not have had an outlet before. This team effort can often be much more reliable than simply depending on one so-called “expert” who may be nothing more than a Wikipedia saboteur himself.