Wiki-Induced Kognitive Insufficiency (WIKI), Enough Symptomatics! What Is The Cause? Options Rating

[Jonny Cache]

"In order to learn you must desire to learn …"

"Ay, there's the rub …"

What is it, then, about Wikipedia, if not indeed about the whole wiki paradigm, that is proving to be such a massive failure in promoting the sharing of information, learning, knowledge, wisdom, all that good stuff — at least once that critical threshold is passed, in the direction of increasingly uncritical thought?

Well, I know the dynamics of our own sweet Etopia well enough to know that nothing so meditative will compete with the Main Distraction on the Midway this week … or the next … but I thought I might leave this note to self, just in case things get dull toward the Ides.

P.S. I was going to call it Wiki-Induced Learning Disorder but the acronym WILD might have made it sound like a good thing.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Mon 3rd March 2008, 2:01pm

[Jonny Cache]

Before I recount a few real life, er, wiki-½-life scenarios that were scene by me before I was so obscenely split from the scene and scendicated in manifold reruns, let me emphasize the following take on the scene.

Genuine wikis and pretenders to the paradigm like Wikipedia are products of Social-Technical Engineering, which means that we have to examine their entire Social-Technical Architecture in order to make any sense of them at all.

In the case of Wikipedia, this means that we have to consider the Essays, Guidelines, And Policies (EGAP's) that record the Doctrines of its "Culture" or its "Social Contract" or whatever you want to call it. Of course it doesn't mean that we have to take those doctrines literally — dont be silly — we have to adopt what sociologists call the "functional" point of view, and ask ourselves what ends those doctrines serve. In the case of Wikipedia, I think it's clear to most unindoctrinated outside observers that its EGAP's serve far less often as guides to considered future conduct than as a Liturgy Of Ritual Recitations (LORR) to pronounce over actions that were always 4gone conclusions. In short, the whole corpus of WP:EGAP is semantically and pragmatically equivalent to the use of such cachepharses as King's X, Landru Be Praised, or Amen.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Tue 4th March 2008, 4:05pm