There are a number of key topics that are discussed both in Web 2.0 & Web2 and in David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous. Perhaps the most apparent is the importance of “user” input; in Web 2.0/Web2 the idea is labeled “Collective intelligence” (Web 2.0 p. 2 & Web2 p. 2), basically a collective effort to create something vaster and more complicated than could be created by small number of individuals. They also list several organizations that have successfully harnessed the power of user input, among them Amazon and Wikipedia. Weinberger also touches on this concept saying rather than the “authorities” that it is the “we” that together will shape the new digital disorder. Like O’Reilly and Battelle, he mentions Amazon, discussing their implementation of customer reviews and their “Listmania” which allows users to create their own booklists (p. 59-61). Weinberger mentions Wikipedia as well (appropriately, as it is perhaps the most triumphant example of the fruits of collective intelligence), pointing out that the entirety of its amazing collection of knowledge is created and updated by anyone who wishes to (p. 100)*. This ties in to another shared concept: control, or rather giving up control. O’Reilly states that Web 2.0 is made up of cooperating data sources and encourages further cooperation, and Weinberger says that users are in control of the organization of data, which allows for more useful ways of sorting and using it (p. 93, 105).
Another common theme between Web 2.0/Web2 and Weinberger is the importance of data. Web 2.0 calls data the “next Intel Inside” saying that control of data will provide a competitive edge for businesses. Similarly, Weinberger says that “everything is metadata” in his “four new strategic principles” (p. 104). The gist of this is that data, or metadata is what drives the internet. This is the key reason that the web is so amazing; a world of knowledge at our fingertips that can be easily found and reorganized with whatever fragments (metadata) we currently possess.
Lastly, there is the niche appeal of the internet. This “long tail” is mentioned in O’Reilly’s Web 2.0, and he encourages people/businesses to “reach out to the entire web” and all of the small niches, rather than just focusing on the center. Weinberger describes this concept in his new strategic principles as “Filter on the way out, not on the way in.” He discusses how the change from paper to digital publishing allows for much more information to be put into public view (p. 102-3). He suggest that rather than having someone to filter out the “slush” that “it’s up to each reader to be filterer” and locate information that may only be interesting to themselves and a few others. When you have a multitude of niches filled with esoteric information, each person can find knowledge that is of interest to them rather than only what is deemed appropriate by “gatekeepers”.
Undoubtedly, I have left out a few other shared themes and ideas but these were the ones that I thought were the most prevalent and important. (This information filtered by Angela.)
* Apply some common sense when partaking of Wikipedia’s bounty though. After all at one point it had an article stating that sharks can shoot lasers out of their eyes, and less egregious misinformation may remain unnoticed for a while.
I am really interested in the idea of gatekeepers and the idea of our own personal filtration system in this chapter. I find it intriguing that we have strayed so far from the necessity of a PHD to publish a book, to anyone keeping a blog on the same ideas and being easily read-able by another person. Granted, the words, peer-reviewed come into mind and then we are faced with the dilemma between free information and what is more reputable.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if we will ever police the internet in the way we have with out physical published works. If we have racism and hate speech and lets say we considered it non-academic, should we eliminate that comment online? Is that free speech? Should we determine our standards based off of it contributing to collective intelligence? Companies and newspapers online even now are facing this question and many choose to err on the side of caution and delete messages of this mold. This poses a difficult and interesting challenge.
very informative and detailed post. I agree with the main points you've made and you did a good job connecting the articles together. The idea of collective intelligence is what interests me the most. The idea that the internet in a way represents the intelligence of the world as a whole is crazy to think about, especially since we have that intelligence at our fingertips most of the time these days.
ReplyDeleteThere's a limit to the usefulness of user control of data - you need a large enough concentration of people with enough free time to really make sense out of a large data set.
ReplyDeleteA forum system needs one moderator per N active users to stay sensible, it needs a good anti-spam system (whether automatic or cultural - how hard is it to get an account or post?), it needs a community interested in providing content and it needs active users who are interested in keeping the quality of that content high.
The same principle applies to wikis of all sorts. Though it's decidedly NSFW and probably not safe for rational individuals, the unofficial 4-chan /b/ wiki Encyclopedia Dramatica is a good example of what a wiki looks like when the majority of users are dedicated to creative defacement. If you gave spray cans to the monkeys at the monolith at the beginning of "2001", this is the sort of thing that would be painted on the side of it.
By comparison, Wikipedia is the very height of cleanliness - mostly because of its large volume of interested moderators. Moderators for corporate forums are hard enough to find that companies often hire people specifically to fill that role - because they haven't developed a healthy enough community to attract gratis moderation (or they don't trust anybody who isn't on the payroll).
I enjoyed reading your comprehensive blog post and the connections you make between the two articles and the book are quite validated. This whole idea of 'collective intelligence' is the next step for the Internet, as the world population begins to share and combine their knowledge with everyone else's. Cool concept.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I really like the connection you bring up of "control." I think this, for me, is the biggest change in all things Internet (in comparison to other forms of media). User control, while still not totally free of media control, is way more user-centered than ever before. This distributed potential for control of media forms is really interesting to me, and likely really terrifying to most media moguls (see, for eg, their stranglehold on copyright as evidence).
ReplyDeleteThanks for your thoughts. Well done.