Another interesting point raised at Akahele (The cautious site with the beautiful name) highlights the problem of crowds: the concern for peer-produced data in an environment where some of those peers want to insert malicious, propagandistic or otherwise known-flawed results into a system. But the problem isn’t limited to peer-produced knowledge, and it seems that El Sevier, the publisher everyone loves to hate, is just as happy to game the system in an entirely expert-driven manner. The cynical part of me has always argued that the criticisms of Wikipedia result from a naive vision of knowledge production in traditional spheres, and this seems to back it up, but I think it’s more problematic than that. We seem to be moving into a post-post-modern period where it’s not just the critics who think that meaning and truth are malleable but also the consumers and creators of knowledge. It’s like 1984 but instead of just Big Brother manipulating the facts, imagine if Winston Smith was also manipulating the facts in his own personal life and on common peer resources. The journal industry in academia has been oft-criticized as of late, concurrent with the criticism of academia itself, and I think if we’re not careful we’re going to see the El Seviers and Wikipedias of the world meet in the middle, where only the most mundane of facts are agreed upon and, like modern news agencies, anyone will be able to point to their favored experts (or non-expert encyclopedias) to support whatever malicious intention they have. Doubly worrisome is the effect this must be having on the traditional citizen, who according to Enlightenment theory requires their proper understanding of the world (known as education) to make informed choices in directing the course of their political system.
Nowadays, with ready access to expert and non-expert knowledge that supports every side of every debate, we’re faced with an extremely public social surgery, and all indications are that amputation or leeching will come back in vogue. Whatever your stance on creationism or globalization or climate change or Islam or Tibetan nationalism, you can now find experts, news outlets, journal articles, &c &c to support you. This does not seem to be a sustainable system. But what’s the solution? Will the backlash be a clamoring for a restoration of aristocratic control or a pulsing anarchy of rival ideologies? History tends to describe the latter as too unstable to last for long. I don’t know.
This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 8:55 AM and is filed under Academia, Digital Innovation, Eschatology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.