The idiocy of turning to Web 2.0 for real life solutions, Andrew Keen gets it right again Options Rating

[Kato]

Writer and critic of Wikipedia Andrew Keen gets it right again in his latest blog post.

http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/the_great_se...-schwab-th.html

In the piece he describes the latest pronouncements from Klaus Schwab, the founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum. In the midst of the current economic meltdown, Schwab has turned to Web 2.0 for solutions.

According to Keen, while Schwab "does call for the creation of a creation of a “talent commons” of demographic and geographic diversity, his vision nonetheless represents the vision of a world government of unelected experts". Schwab describes his vision as a “virtual, Web 2.0-based global community”

So rather than turn to the obvious political solutions to problems caused by deregulation of the markets, Schwab is calling for even more deregulation in all aspects of life - and placing even less trust in traditional democratic solutions and more trust in unaccountable cliques. According to Keen, "the truth, of course, is it is anything but open, anything but democratic, anything but accountable or transparent."

As Wikipedia Reviewers, we know that the governance model presented by Jimbo Wales is riddled with many serious problems. As echoed above, regarding the lack of transparency, the absence of accountability, the ease in which oligarchical cliques can gain power, the difficulty encountered when trying to make pragmatic improvements to the model, and so on. It is the opposite of "transparent", the opposite of "accountable", the opposite of "democratic".

We know better than anyone that this model fails. Yet most of the world seems to remain hoodwinked by the myth, unaware of the reality.

And as predicted by Reviewers previously, the discrepancy between Wiki-myth and Wiki-reality has allowed this failed model to start to hoodwink the world's architects. And serious people are naively beginning to turn to Web 2.0 charlatans like Jimbo Wales for solutions.

You can watch Keen debate with Jimbo Wales (who we know is a regular speaker at Klaus Schwab's Davos conferences) here:

http://fora.tv/2008/02/28/Jimmy_Wales_and_..._Debate_Web_2_0

[Kato]

I'm adding a response by Glassbeadgame from another thread concerning the blocking of the German WP by German authorities, that relates to this thread in some ways.

The free speech aspects are not trival and at some point it could lead to even me weighing in on Wikipedia's side. But for the moment it more interesting that Wikipedia inability at editorial restrain, self-policing, and it's willful disregard for the concerns of anyone or entity outside of "the community" leads to a nation state taking some measure against them. Hardly draconian yet. Lawrence Lessing at one time asserted that "Code is Law" and that nation state would falter and crumble in the face of web 2.0 technology, information wanting to be free and all. He has since eaten his words in public and know acknowledges that his internment of the nation state was a bit premature. China is usually cited as the chief example of this capacity to respond. Certainly if Germany wanted to ax Wikipedia it could do so.

[EricBarbour]

And as predicted by Reviewers previously, the discrepancy between Wiki-myth and Wiki-reality has allowed this failed model to start to hoodwink the world's architects. And serious people are naively beginning to turn to Web 2.0 charlatans like Jimbo Wales for solutions.

And that brings up a tale.

You ought to get and read the book Charlatan. It's about one of the most prominent quack doctors of the 1930s, John R. Brinkley. At one time, Brinkley was so popular, he ran for governor of Kansas. Despite having a diploma-mill degree, an insatiable need for money (during the Great Depression), and a "practice" that was based upon implanting goat testicles into people's abdomens and then selling them useless "medicines". He apparently killed hundreds of people with his assembly-line "surgery".

The irony: Brinkley was a major innovator in the early development of radio broadcasting. All the textbooks about radio's early days mention him, because he started the first Mexican super-power station. (Which he used to sell his bogus medicines....and rail against the AMA for trying to get him shut down.)

Sound like anyone we know?

[Milton Roe]

And as predicted by Reviewers previously, the discrepancy between Wiki-myth and Wiki-reality has allowed this failed model to start to hoodwink the world's architects. And serious people are naively beginning to turn to Web 2.0 charlatans like Jimbo Wales for solutions.

And that brings up a tale.

You ought to get and read the book Charlatan. It's about one of the most prominent quack doctors of the 1930s, John R. Brinkley. At one time, Brinkley was so popular, he ran for governor of Kansas. Despite having a diploma-mill degree, an insatiable need for money (during the Great Depression), and a "practice" that was based upon implanting goat testicles into people's abdomens and then selling them useless "medicines". He apparently killed hundreds of people with his assembly-line "surgery".

The irony: Brinkley was a major innovator in the early development of radio broadcasting. All the textbooks about radio's early days mention him, because he started the first Mexican super-power station. (Which he used to sell his bogus medicines....and rail against the AMA for trying to get him shut down.)

Sound like anyone we know?

Oh, there's more irony. Brinkley was continuing an old tradition of "mincemeat" endocrinology, whereby you just inject minced organs of animals into people (or eat them) to get their hormones. This actually works with thyroid. And it sort of works with testicles. The elderly famous physiologist Brown-Sequard in 1889 announced to the French accademy that he had been able to service the much younger Ms. Brown-Sequard after injecting himself with testicular extracts, something which drew less laughter (this being French) than it would have in America. This was probably the first human anti-aging study. Brinkley was a quack, but he didn't have any modern knowledge of immune rejection, so his ideas (while irresponsible) are less crazy than they were 70 years ago, when he tried them.

Now, put all of this into the relentless persecution of the FDA for anybody trying to bring testosterone levels up to normal, in aging men. That lasted up to 21st century, and was supported by a lot of bad science which said it was "quackery." For decades, people were told that testosterone didn't actually make men stronger (duh, say what? ), and it didn't actually help ED, and finally, that it increased a man's risk for developing prostate cancer. All this was nonsense (as shown by much later and better studies). But there was no good drug-company money pushing testosterone, because there weren't a lot of proprietary preparations of a natural hormone. Hard to patent. And without pharma money to fight the FDA, not much happened except snide references to John Romulus Brinkley.

So now in the 21st century, almost 120 years after Brown-Sequard, we have a book from Harvard medical school doc who's been doing testesterone-replacement studies in elderly men who have undergone "andropause" (something that doesn't happen to every man, but more medical problems a man has, the more likely it is). Surprise, the results are good. But you will not discover in this book that that patented testosterone-containing skin creme can be duplicated by a compounding pharmacy (chemist) for 1/10 to 1/20th of the cost. That's because the drug company with the skin cream patent funded the Harvard studies.

Yep, it's all enough to make you cynical.