This blog posting isn't actually about Wikipedia, but it's on another front in the fight between old and new media in information provision, in this case newspapers.

Interesting piece. Thanks DT. One extract caught my eye:



Did Craiglist become a "critical piece of infrastructure?" Has it become a "part of public consciousness about what is now possible?"

I'll grant you ebay and maybe Amazon, but Craigslist?

It seems that there is an ever widening gulf between the Tech literate and the non-Tech literate. This is evident in some of the media reports on Wikipedia. Where journalists are way behind speed on how the site operates, and what it all means. As for the average Joe in the street, he might have heard of Wikipedia and seen it here and there, but he basically hasn't a clue and doesn't care.

I'm really struggling to see how Craigslist has become a critical piece of infrastructure and I spend quite a bit of my time online. And if I'm struggling, then most people won't even understand the basic premise of that assertion.

Craiglist is now in the pimping business.

If you'd ever seen their crummy little office on Ninth Avenue in San Francisco,
you would not dream of calling them critical anything.

Craigslist is basically online classified ads. Newspapers generate revenue from classified ads which have been decreasing due to more use of craigslist. This is one of the many reasons newspapers are in trouble or even going out of business. This may be what he's referring to.

Well, it looks much better than the bunker which Wikimedia uses as its posting address.

Have Wikimedia given up on that compound in Guyana yet?

Andrew Keen comments on this essay on his blog.

http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/the_great_se...00-or-1848.html

He calls Shirky's approach to the problems of new media "Free Market Maoism" - a reference to Mao's Cultural Revolution, meaning to "stand back and let a thousand digital flowers bloom".

Shirky doesn't seem to be so much "trusting" the free market to produce a solution, as saying that the death of the current system is inevitable, whether it's a good or a bad thing, and efforts are better placed in helping to come up with new ideas, one of which might possibly arise to become the replacement of the old journalistic system, rather than making futile rear-guard actions to try to prop up the old system, as the news industry (and Keen) have tended to do.

As for having the government step in and assist in the propping up of the news industry... well, it's been doing a great job on the rest of the economy, hasn't it? Anyway, one of the important purposes of the news media is to be a watchdog on the government, a role it will have a lot more trouble playing if it's bailed out by and beholden to the political leaders.

Half a century ago, talented professionals produced almost all media — books, newspapers, magazines, comic books, radio, television, movies, phonograph records, plays, poetry, and sheet music. Production and distribution were expensive commercial propositions, and only the best and most popular creative talent reached an audience.

Today, with computers, the Internet, mass storage, and high bandwidth, anyone can be a producer of almost any kind of media, and distribute it world-wide at negligible cost.

Just as Wikipedia allowed amateurs to displace professionally crafted print encyclopedias, electronic media such as forums, blogs, YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter, and streaming audio allow anyone to displace professionally crafted content across the board.

It isn't just newspapers that are in trouble. All professionally produced media are at risk in the Age of the Internet. As the quantity of available content mushrooms, the variance in quality widens even as the average level of misinfotainment plunges to mean pee level.

Nor is there anything the government can do to rescue the lost advantage of professionally produced news, commentary, literature, comedy, art, and entertainment.

Not quite.

BBC Online (T-H-L-K-D)

In the UK, the number one online destination for professionally produced news, commentary, literature, comedy, art, and entertainment resolutely remains the BBC. Who, of course, have nothing to worry about when it comes to the battle for advertisers, as it is entirely commercial free.

Now time for me to catch up on the latest edition of The Benn Tapes on BBCiplayer! (Not available to American Libertarians)

Yes, there is. The government can stiffen penalties for copyright violation, and provide more money for copyright enforcement. Also, the government can make copyright theft of US commercial products (mostly entertainment products these days-- there's a commentary on our country). We've done some of this with China, but much more is needed.

All this isn't a panacea, but it would be helpful.

Instead, they lengthen copyright duration and expand its provisions, making violations more prevalent and making actual enforcement seem ever more distasteful. It almost looks like sabotage.

SFGate

Steal These Words

Kindle? iPhone? Retinal implant? How do you want your text, modern reader?

By Mark Morford

Here's the thing. I have a new book coming out, shortly, a sticky megacompendium of my finest and weirdest and most incendiary columns, shot through with all sorts of titillating effluvia: vicious hate mail and banned pieces and stuff that almost got me fired, tidbits from my now-defunct underground Morning Fix newsletter, photos and scraps and beyond. It's called The Daring Spectacle. It will contain nudity. It will be legal in almost every state.

It will also be available — and I realize I'm taking a huge risk here — on this strange apparatus, known as paper.

It's true. TDS is, so far and at this moment, to be an actual book, ink and spit and blood and all sorts of classic dead-tree wood-pulp goodness.

It is, in other words, designed to be an actual thing, a physical entity in the world, something to be felt and torn and tossed about, licked and groped and beaten up and loved within an inch of its life and then handed off to that hot barista when you're all done, saying, "Here, you gotta read this, especially the one on page 147 about sociopathic Catholic cheerleaders, and by the way my phone number's in the back."

I know what you're thinking. A whatnow? A book? People still do that? How very retro. How very 1890. How very Gutenberg.

More at the link.