World Book, the Jaguar E-Type and the Myth of the Expert

As more and more amateurs continue to produce knowledge, software and books with little or no help from experts, I think it’s time to clear the mist a little and remember what the world was producing when only experts were in charge.  Too often critiques, like those of Andrew Keen, seem to imply that everything being produced by the infinite number of monkeys and their infinite copies of WordPress is far inferior to that of some mythical, Golden Age of Software, Books and All Products in General That Were Created by Experts.  It’s too easy to focus on software (Does anyone remember what you had to do to get Falcon 3.0 to run on your computer?), so let’s look at some more and less concrete examples.

It’s Pronounced Jag-You-Are

Series 2 FHC... {Wistful John Crichton Voice} I used to have one of those...

It’d be easy to point to the Ford Pinto–poor, derided, explosive thing–but I’d rather latch on to a vehicle more dear to my heart: the Jaguar E-Type.  The E-Type is lauded as a classic, and it is, and a beautiful car, which is also true, but anyone who’s owned one or had any experience with Lucas electrical systems or poorly fitting body work will know that, despite its being the product of an amazing designer and some well-paid professionals, the car had bugs.  Every iteration had bugs, and nobody who bought one (Either at the time they were being produced or later as a classic car) thought otherwise–okay, lots of people thought otherwise, but right-thinking people ignore them.  We used to be more accepting of bugs, and no one ever thought that the crumby cooling system on an old Jag somehow subverted its beautiful lines or its amazing performance.

The Entire World, in One Book?

You know what they say about a World Book encyclopedia, its too small to get smart in, but you get smart as soon as you get out...

View figure at its original source ↗

You know what they say about a World Book encyclopedia, it's too small to get smart in, but you get smart as soon as you get out...

Now, maybe you’ll say a motor vehicle made in the 60s isn’t equivalent to modern peer-produced knowledge banks like Wikipedia, so let’s look at something a little more modern and encyclopedic.  The World Book Encyclopedia includes, along with too-short clips of Verde, an article on the history of India which barely touches on the Muslim role in the independence movement.  I’m an environmental historian who focuses on China, so what do I know, but my wife is an expert on South Asia, and has a graduate degree from one of the top institutions in the world, and she pointed out to me that the neglect on the part of World Book to include the role of the Muslim League or Sir Syed Ahmad Khan was a travesty.  Built by experts, and buggy, the World Book Encyclopedia isn’t a failure any more than an overheating Jaguar.

Bugs scale with a product.  And if some of that product is putatively a beta, those bugs will be more prominent in the beta (and alpha) sections.  Maybe it’s time we acknowledge that Wikipedia is eight years old, and Linux is only 18, and start to compare the products of this new method of production with actual things that exist in the world, like Jaguar E-Types, and not hypothetical, mythical, magical encyclopedias, operating systems, databases and vector graphics packages that never crash, never have errors, are created and run by geniuses, and never have any problems at all, because they’re perfect.

And yes, I’m still throwing Wikipedia in the Open Source bucket, until Linus himself emails me a photo of his Jimbo Wales dartboard.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 19th, 2009 at 2:37 PM and is filed under Digital Innovation, Eschatology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.