Wikis As Media In The Service Of Repression, WAMITSOR Options Rating

[Jon Awbrey]

Something there is that doesn't love a reality …

and it didn't have to be …

but it is —

wikis are becoming the carrier of choice …

in the flight from reality.

Jon Awbrey

[Jon Awbrey]

I hope it's clear that I'm talking about repression in a very general sense, including its personal and political manifestations under the same head. Indeed, it has all the makings of a classic chicken-egg causal cycle of co-evolution to puzzle over how it all gets started.

The critical bug-feature in all these wikis — and I'm counting here all those blogs and nuisites where they delete your comments just as soon as you add anything Out Of School or Off The House POV — is the ability of the Power Da Leet On Site to "win" any argument with no more e-fort than it takes to deleet inconvenient data and opposing arguments.

Rare is the Power Da Leet that can resist the temptation to e-force its POV by such means — bit by bit at the upstart, but e-ventually e-dictively and almost x-clusively.

Like I said —

Off The House POV

Jon Awbrey

[GlassBeadGame]

I hope it's clear that I'm talking about repression in a very general sense, including its personal and political manifestations under the same head. Indeed, it has all the makings of a classic chicken-egg causal cycle of co-evolution to puzzle over how it all got started.

The critical bug-feature in all these wikis — and I'm counting here all those blogs and nuisites where they delete your comments just as soon as you add anything Out Of School or Off The House POV — is the ability of the Power Da Leet On Site to "win" any argument with no more e-fort than it takes to deleet inconvenient data and opposing arguments.

Rare is the Power Da Leet that can resist the temptation to e-force its POV by such means — bit by bit at the upstart, but e-ventually e-dictively and almost x-clusively.

Like I said —

Off The House POV

Jon Awbrey

I think there is something to Wikis as exploitative and perhaps repressive tools in most political and societal sense, not just the personal pwn'ing of individual editors. The basic premise underlying wikis is that voluntary individual atomized content generalization will, through the magic of the Invisible Hand, transform itself into an optimized and self correcting body of work bringing the maximum benefit to all. At the same time wiki software and culture facilitates the concentration of privileged (literally', in the "permission" sense) into the hands of a few pre-selected and thereafter self-reinforced actors. The wiki is a rigged game that exists for benefit and use these privileged actors while the egalitarian illusion keeps the bulk of exploited labor grinding away. This game fixing is then rigorously denied and hidden. The story for consumption is that everyone contributes on a level playing field and only merit and hard work distinguishes participants. This is the story bought hook-line-and-sinker by the ultra-democratic community and wiki boosters best embodied by Everyking.

What we have is a fairly good analog to the political economy (although the very word would be vehemently denied) of the worlds largest post-industrial democracy which has been itself largely unchallenged until recently.

[Angela Kennedy]

Very apt analyses Jon and GBG. I particularly liked the analogy of Adam Smith's 'Invisible Hand'. I hadn't considered it that way before now.

Of course, when it comes to the control of knowledge and consequential acquisition of power, the stakes are high in that particular game.

Is there a House POV in Wikipedia though? If so, what is it? Or perhaps a potentially more fruitful question is: What POVs are being repressed?

[Jon Awbrey]

Very apt analyses Jon and GBG. I particularly liked the analogy of Adam Smith's 'Invisible Hand'. I hadn't considered it that way before now.

Of course, when it comes to the control of knowledge and consequential acquisition of power, the stakes are high in that particular game.

Is there a House POV in Wikipedia though? If so, what is it? Or perhaps a potentially more fruitful question is: What POVs are being repressed?

What I've been learning in my wanderings — through wikis far afield from Wikipedia — is that there's a House in every Wiki-Casino, maybe not at first, but soon, and you know the rest …

The situation in Wikipedia is so boringly, contemptibly familiar that I don't think I can say anything novel about it, per se.

So I'm taking this occasion to focus attention on the flaws in the oinkment of the underlying wiki paradigm — the ingredients that make it such an addictive dopiate on so many scales, both macro and micro.

Jon Awbrey

P.S. Co-incidental link I just got in the mail.

[Somey]

It's not just the way content-development is directed either, whether the hand is visible or not. The sad fact of it is, the wide distribution of paper encyclopedias (and other printed materials) has made it nearly impossible to retroactively control information dissemination. Once publishing is mostly electronic, the future development of EMP weapons and various other means to damage/destroy the electric grid and information infrastructure (not to mention the potential for tighter governmental control of the internet in general) will make that kind of retroactive control a non-negligible possibility.

I realize that's not a wiki-specific concern, but if you ask me, Wikipedia's near-dominance in that regard only makes things easier for those wishing to establish centralized control, if not get rid of the whole thing.

That probably sounds like something Lyndon LaRouche would say, doesn't it?

[gomi]

I realize that's not a wiki-specific concern, but if you ask me, Wikipedia's near-dominance in that regard only makes things easier for those wishing to establish centralized control, if not get rid of the whole thing.

Among my librarian friends (yes, I have a few), there is much concern about government control over libraries and what is in them. There have been any number of incidents in the United States where the government has published something in some obscure government publication, only to come around after 9/11 to every library with a quasi- (which is to say non-) judicial order to literally tear those pages out of the relevant book.

Similarly, there are big companies who have and continue to go to great lengths to suppress information about them, including buying all extant copies of some publication to do so.

The librarians, as you might expect, think that the control over this is lots and lots and lots of dissemination of copies of relevant information to libraries, public, private, and otherwise, around the world. The principle has been embodied in an electronic project: LOCKSS: Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe. The LOCKSS system allows for distribution of (e.g.) digital journals among the holders of those journals, and provides mechanisms for reliable and secure retrieval of original copies when a "corrupted" copy is detected. Of central issue is the question of what constitutes "corruption" and the technology of the system is heavily weighted toward secure on-line "voting" (it's between systems, not people) about the correctness of specific digital copies.

Wikipedia has many problem with its policies, content, and internal political structure, but one that we don't talk about much is the utter centralization of it. English-language Wikipedia -- a "document" that has gotten people arrested and detained at airports, perhaps caused suicides, and serves as a vehicles for propaganda from all sides of innumerable political and social conflicts -- is prone to what engineers call a "single point failure" at many, many levels, and thus prone to single point control. While it was arguably used for "good", the suppression earlier this year of news of the kidnapping of New York Times journalist Stephan Farrell shows how easy it is for a very small cluster of individuals to control what Wikipedia says on virtually any topic.

Lots of copies keep stuff safe. One copy, located in Jimbo's garage in Florida, is the antithesis of that(*).

(*) Don't bother telling me that it is really in a big data center and it's all backed up on some server in Copenhagen. For purposes of control, it's entirely centralized.

[Herschelkrustofsky]

I realize that's not a wiki-specific concern, but if you ask me, Wikipedia's near-dominance in that regard only makes things easier for those wishing to establish centralized control, if not get rid of the whole thing.

That probably sounds like something Lyndon LaRouche would say, doesn't it?

Actually, LaRouche doesn't like the original French Encyclopedists from back in the day. I think he frowns on orthodoxy.

Incidentally, I just ran across this. Has it already been discussed around these parts?

[MZMcBride]

So I'm taking this occasion to focus attention on the flaws in the oinkment of the underlying wiki paradigm — the ingredients that make it such an addictive dopiate on so many scales, both macro and micro.

Is this really what you were trying to discuss? The first few posts of this thread don't seem to address this issue (the addictive quality of wikis / the Internet), leaving me confused.

[Jon Awbrey]

Is this really what you were trying to discuss? The first few posts of this thread don't seem to address this issue (the addictive quality of wikis / the Internet), leaving me confused.

If I can recall what I was thinking about this morning, I was mostly just reflecting on my experiences participating in various blog and wiki sites that lay at what I initially considered a far and healthy remove from the baleful influence of Wikipediocracszy

And yet I found myself observing by and large the same patterns of group dynamics working themselves out over the long haul.

The other thing that struck me about the perceptions that other participants in these sites communicated to me at various critical moments was the stunning lack of self-awareness and situational awareness that it would take for anyone to say some of the things they said — all with with no hint of irony intended.

In every case, well-known features of blog and wiki media of communication are the factors that made distorted representations of the real situation possible. And distorted representations of reality made dysfunctional behavior amplify itself with inexorable force.

But I need to sleep now …

Jon Awbrey

[Jon Awbrey]

All I know is that the Web is a very different place from the one I knew 10 years ago.

There has sprung up an overwhelming need to obliterate alternative ways of looking at the world — not just the normal give and take of different points of view but a drive to eliminate any record that another perspective ever existed.

And the wiki software paradigm is making it possible to do just that.

Unintended Consequence? … or No Coincidence?

Jon Awbrey

[dtobias]

Among my librarian friends (yes, I have a few), there is much concern about government control over libraries and what is in them. There have been any number of incidents in the United States where the government has published something in some obscure government publication, only to come around after 9/11 to every library with a quasi- (which is to say non-) judicial order to literally tear those pages out of the relevant book.

Like the Ministry of Truth did in 1984?

[Jon Awbrey]

When we talk about delible media as tools of repression, most people get the political sense of it quickly enough — at least, they are sensitive to the forms of eracism they personally suffer at the hands of the proverbial other — but reflection on the psychology of repression is a far more difficult musing to face.

I've been wondering why that is …

Jon

[thekohser]

When we talk about delible media as tools of repression, most people get the political sense of it quickly enough — at least, they are sensitive to the forms of eracism they personally suffer at the hands of the proverbial other — but reflection on the psychology of repression is a far more difficult musing to face.

I've been wondering why that is …

Jon

That question is beyond my ability to reason out an answer while not either enrolled in a course that requires me to answer or being paid by a client to answer.

Still, I have a sneaking suspicion you just wanted to use the cute icon, Jon.

[Moulton]

On occasion, I've mused on the psychology of eracism, but invariably some Mod took umbrage and erased it.

[Jon Awbrey]

On occasion, I've mused on the psychology of eracism, but invariably some Mod took umbrage and erased it.

Take Our Umbrage … Please !!!



Jon

[Jon Awbrey]

When we talk about delible media as tools of repression, most people get the political sense of it quickly enough — at least, they are sensitive to the forms of eracism they personally suffer at the hands of the proverbial other — but reflection on the psychology of repression is a far more difficult musing to face.

I've been wondering why that is …

Jon

That question is beyond my ability to reason out an answer while not either enrolled in a course that requires me to answer or being paid by a client to answer.

Still, I have a sneaking suspicion you just wanted to use the cute icon, Jon.

I've been having some unusual difficulties with it myself.

I thought I could see the glimmer of a new angle the other day, but I'm already beginning to forget what that was. I did what I usually do to fix a vanishing image — I dashed off a handy acronym — Banishing Unpleasant Thoughts (BUT).

So there's a handle —

Delible Media : The BUT of Human Knowledge …

Jon

[Moulton]

Banishing Unpleasant Thoughts (BUT).

BUT... Aren't Inquisitions merely the unpleasant aspect of Inquiry?

[Jon Awbrey]

Banishing Unpleasant Thoughts (BUT)

BUT … Aren't Inquisitions merely the unpleasant aspect of Inquiry?

No 1 expects the Spammish Dysquisition — BUT that's only the 1st time.

Jon

[Jon Awbrey]

On a clear day, you can see forever, said Jon Prescienterrifically.

Something there is that doesn't love a reality …

and it didn't have to be …

BUT it is —

wikis are becoming the carrier of choice …

in the flight from reality.

Jon Awbrey

Emphasis added …

Jon