How Wikipedia Puts The Existence Of A Free Press At Risk, And A Free Press Will Die, Not With A Bang, But A Wiki Options Rating

[Jon Awbrey]

How Wikipedia Is Putting The Existence Of A Free Press At Risk

Wikipedia has shown us that a mass medium can be rendered so plastic and so well-leveraged that any part of it can be manipulated by a relatively small number of people, in ways that defy a free society's usual means to guard against it, so long as the special interests in question have a moderate amount of resources and the will to do so. If there are portions of the content that remain untouched, it is for two reasons only: (1) no one has conceived a stake in them yet, (2) virgin forest makes for good cover.

If you're thinking that Wikipedia is the Latest Thing in Blows Against The Empire, then you have a DoubleThink coming.

Jon Awbrey, Comment in The Guardian, 30 Jan 2009, 2:02am

[Rhindle]

I wonder what Neil Postman would say about wikipedia and web 2.0 in general.

Information has become a form of garbage, not only incapable of answering the most fundamental human questions but barely useful in providing coherent direction to the solution of even mundane problems

[Jon Awbrey]

I wonder what Neil Postman would say about wikipedia and web 2.0 in general.

Information has become a form of garbage, not only incapable of answering the most fundamental human questions but barely useful in providing coherent direction to the solution of even mundane problems

Data In Gargage Out (DIGO) is a persistent phenomenon, perhaps irresistible in the end � intelligence in the universe has always been a Sisyphean struggle to push the cornerstones of the mind down the hill of rising entropy � but there are specific factors that have risen to prominence with the onset of Usenet and its more obstreperous spawn, Wikipedia.

For some odd reason whose cause I don't know, except perhaps their own massive ignorance of where anyone else is coming from, Wikipediots act like anyone who points out the specific defects of Wikipedia must have some kind of nostalgia for the smell of greaseprint and parchment. They talk as though pointing out flaws in Wikipedia can only be due to a horror of all IT. But this is just a projection from their own Wikipedia Is The Only Game In Town (WITOGIT) complex, and it doesn't really apply to anyone else. The truth is, Wikipediots are falling more and more behind the curve when it comes to thinking about the real future of IT, prospects and perils both, precisely because their diehard fixation on a single model has rendered them incapable of making comparative, critical, reflective surveys of alternative futures.

Jon Awbrey