Category: Internet Culture and Technology

Lanier: Digital Maoism

Edge has an essay by VR visionary Jaron Lanier called Digital Maoism about how wikis and other forms of social networking are just replacing one elite with a collective.

No, the problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it’s been elevated to such importance so quickly. And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force. This is different from representative democracy, or meritocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods. The fact that it’s now being re-introduced today by prominent technologists and futurists, people who in many cases I know and like, doesn’t make it any less dangerous.

Thanks to Mark for pointing this out.

UK Children Go Online

UK Children Go Online: Emerging Opportunities and Dangers is a large and systematic study of the “nature and meaning of children’s internet use and maps emerging paterns of attitudes and practices across diverse contexts and social groups in the UK.” The report has some interesting stuff about the risks of children encountering porn (57% of 9-19 regular users have come across porn) and the risks of online communication (“parents underestimate” it).

At the site you can get copies of their reports and links to comparable reports elsewhere.

iLoo and other duds

The Wall Street Journal Online has a story by Katherine Meyer, The Best of the Worst (May 3, 2006) about dot-com duds that failed like Microsoft’s iLoo portable toilet with an internet connection. (Yes, it was supposed to have a waterproof keyboard and would be used at UK music festivals.) Other duds include CyberRebate.com, Flooz.com, iSmell, and the CueCat. The last dud mentioned is PointCast which offered a custom browser for push content which I actually tried for a while. This came from Slashdot.

Eugene Roman

Eugene Roman, the Group President of Bell Canada Systems & Technology, came to talk to a Communication Studies class about The Digitization of Everything: The MODern Era. In his talk and conversations after he asked us to look up and think about Holons. He asked us to think in the inverse – ie. not to ask how to make a better Google, but what an anti-Google would be like. He also talked about viral thinking and how to “infect” others. When we got talking about wireless (and he sees it all going wireless) he made the interesting observation that a barcode is a form of wireless communication, even if the distance is not great. What will we be able to do with barcodes if taking a picture of a barcode with a wireless camera-phone can trigger things?

Online Petitions

A colleague sent me a link to a Recall David Emerson Petition which got me thinking about online petition software. Can one set one up easily? Do they work? What are the ethical issues? How do you know you really have signatures? Here are some preliminary answers:

What sites offer online petition systems? I looked at three that seemed reasonable, PetitionOnline.com, iPetitions, and PetitionThem.com.
Continue reading Online Petitions

GarbageScout

Interesting uses of Google Maps are cropping up all over. Vanessa sent me a note about GarbageScout.com. For those in New York it shows the location and images of interesting garbage that you might want to recycle. Contributors can e-mail a photo to GarbageScout with information about the location of the goods.

Google: Where is it going?

A common thread of discussion here is where is Google going? They seem to be very good at what they do, but what is there larger plan, if any? Google going after Microsoft and Apple is an article by Mike Langberg of the Mercury News (Sunday, Jan. 15, 2006) that suggests that Google’s plan is to go after Microsoft and Apple. Very ambitious, and possibly doable.

Thanks to James Chartrand for this.

More on the Wikipedia

More on the Wikipedia fuss. watching wikipedia watch is a blog entry on how Daniel Brandt of Wikipedia Watch outted the author of the false Wikipedia entry on Seigenthaler.

In an earlier story if:book, a group blog, comments on a Nature article comparing Wikipedia to the Encyclopedia Brittanica – they found them equivalent in terms of accuracy, though Brittanica articles were generally better written.

Wikipedia: Game or Reference?

What is it with Wikipedia? by Bill Thompson of the BBC summarizes the recent fuss about the accuracy of the Wikipedia. For example John Seigenthaler wrote an opinion in USA Today titled USATODAY.com – A false Wikipedia ‘biography’ about the prank biography in the Wikipedia which suggested he was tied to the Kennedy assassinations. In his opinion piece he wirtes about his attempts to track down the joker who defamed him.

Today Google News had as a top story a joke news story in The Register by critic Andrew Orlowski that Wikipedia founder ‘shot by friend of Siegenthaler’. Orlowski references the Wikipedia on the shooting, though I can’t find the reference now. Working my way back through the Wikipedia history for the Jimmy Wales entry shows that today (Dec. 18) there have been an unuasual number of edits on the page including spurious ones with graphic pictures. His entry has become a site for contest and Orlowski is mocking it/Jimmy for and with this. Orlowski compares the Wikipedia to a roleplaying game for wannabe encyclopedia writers, but there is another game afoot which is more serious, and that is the game of the hack.

Is this the end of the open Wikipedia? Will it be hacked into forcing people to register to edit? Is it the nature of open systems that if sucessful they get vandalized?