week 4
September 24, 2008
In Roy Rosenzweig’s article “Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past” the author explains Wikipedia in terms of its origins, how it works, its level of historical writing, and the potential implications for history as scholars, teachers, and the general public. After describing the beginnings of Wikipedia and how it works, Rosenzweig delves deeper to attack the ever-present issue of Wikipedia vs. Britannica, amateur vs. professional. After presenting both sides of the issues. he poses the question, “Can the wiki way foster the collaborative creation of historical knowledge?” He concludes that the barriers are more social than technological, and that although Wikipeida is based on a egalitarian model, professional historians should, in fact, contribute as a commons-based peer production (groups of individuals successfully collaborate on large-scale projects following a diverse cluster of motivational drivers and social signals better than either market process or managerial commands).
“Googling the Victorians” by Patrick Leary did not discuss Wikipedia, but it it focused on the usefulness of the Internet as a complex research tool for subjects such as the Victoria Era. He writes that many Victorian documents and literature are not online because there have been no coordinated attempts to synchronize Victorian literary canon with tools such as OCR – optical character recognition. This has mostly to do with 19th century copyright laws. Leary stresses that there are many independent and personal sites on Web 2.0 that are not only great resources for information, but also useful for connecting people around the world to share their various research and experience with the Victorian Era.
“No Computer Left Behind” by Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig discusses the possible future of computers in the classroom. They pose that Scantron and multiple choice exams, which ultimately led to a school-based culture of the rote memorization that has little to do with true learning, will be replaced by a historical calculator that uses algorithms to locate correct answers. This H-Bot program will test the ratios of accurate and inaccurate historical information on the Web and find the answers based on algorithms. Although this argument seems somewhat facetious, the authors are stressing that the H-Bot would improve history education by displacing the” fetishizing of factual memorization.”
Stacy Schiff’s “Know It All” is a more condensed, more casual article describing Wikipedia’s origins, uses, pros and cons. She gives a broad overview on how Wikipedia differs from a traditional encyclopedia (i.e. most encyclopedias do not instruct someone on how to make snowshoes and Wikipedia does). She questions Wikipedia’s accuracy but also defends Wikipedia as a work in progress. I was amused how the author offers, “Wikipedia is to Britannica as ‘American Idol’ is to the Julliard School.”
“Who Says We Know: On the New Politics of Knowledge” is an article by Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia. This article focuses on the philosophy of knowledge, “background knowledge” (what society reports and teaches as fact without usually mentioning the dissenters), and what everyone should know. Sanger firmly believes that Wikipedia needs to have expert reviwers in order to improve and build credibility. With keeping a strict egalitarian and anti-meritocratic outlook, Wikipedia will never achieve status as a reliable source for consultation. Sanger believes that experts deserve a more prominent voice in declaring what is known because knowledge is their life, and they have the qualifications to do so.
In “Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism,” Jaron Lanier stresses that Wikipedia itself is not the problem, but how Wikipedia and online collectivism have been regarded and used and how they have been elevated to such importance so quickly. The loss of personal authorship is a much greater problem than the wikis themselves. The spread of collectivism has spread to the business world and are often inappropriately used. Just as collective information on the Internet suffers from loss of authorship, loss of insight, disregard for nuances of considered opinions, and the tendency to enshrine the official or normative beliefs of an organization plague the business world because of collectivism. The answer is to determine in what instances is the collective better than the individual and vice versa. Lanier closes his article by stating, “It ought to be possible to find a humanistic and practical way to maximize value of the collective on the Web without turning ourselves into idiots. The best guiding principle is to always cherish individuals first.”
This week’s readings pertained to the pros and cons of Wikipedia and online collectivism. I particularly enjoyed these articles because it presented me with the deeper ideas and more complex arguments for and against Wikipedia. I particularly enjoyed the Lanier and Sanger articles because they stressed the importance of the individual and the value of experts respectively.
