Time Magazine (Sept 28, 2009) has an interesting short article on Wikepedia:
“. . . early in 2007, something strange happened: Wikipedia’s growth line flattened. People suddenly became reluctant to create new articles or fix errors or add their kernels of wisdom to existing pages.”
“”By the middle of 2009, we realized that this was a real phenomenon,” says (Ed) Chi (computer scientist at California’s Palo Alto Research Center whose lab has studied Wikipedia extensively). “It’s no longer growing exponentially. Something very different is happening now.”"
“What stunted Wikipedia’s growth? And what does the slump tell us about the long-term viability of such strange and invaluable online experiments? Perhaps the Web has limits after all, particularly when it comes the phenomenon known as crowdsourcing.”
“Not only is Wikipedia slowing, but also new stats suggest that hard-core participants are a pretty homogeneous set–the opposite of the ecumenical wiki ideal. Women, for instance, make up only 13% of contributors.”
“Chi’s research suggests that the encyclopedia thrives on chaos–that the more freewheeling it is, the better it can attract committed volunteers who keep adding to its corpus. But over the years as Wikipedia has added layers of control to bolster accuracy and fairness, it has developed a kind of bureaucracy.”
“There is a benign explanation of Wikipedia’s slackening pace: the site has simply hit the limit of knowledge expansion.”
“Chi thinks something more drastic has occurred: the Web’s first major ecosystem collapse.”
” . . . Wikipedia’s troubles suggest the limits of Web 2.0–that when an idealized community gets too big, it starts becoming dysfunctional. Just like other human organizations.”
L. Gordon Crovitz quoted in Time (taken from the WSJ Mar 1, 2010):
“Last week, [textbook publisher] Macmillan announced new software to let college instructors rewrite textbooks by substituting new material for what the author wrote . . . We have to wonder about the unintended consequences of a textbook absent an author . . . Technology creates opportunities, and the genie shouldn’t go back in the bottle. Still, the integrity and authenticity that a single author provides should not be lost.”
According to Jaron Lanier in “You Are Not a Gadget”, p. 46 and 47:
“The approach to digital culture I abhor would indeed turn all the world’s books into one book. . . . It might start to happen in the next decade or so. Google and other companies are scanning library books into the cloud in a massive Manhatten Project for cultural digitization. What happens next is what’s important. If the books in the cloud are accessed via user interfaces that encourage mashups of fragment that obscure the context and authorsite of each fragment, there will be only one book. . . .”
“The one collective book will absolutely not be the same thing as the library of books by individuals it is bankrupting. Some believe it will be better; others, including me, believe it will be disasterously worse. As the famous line goes from “Inherit the Wind”: ‘The Bible is a book . . . but it is not the only book.” Any singular, exclusive book, even the collective one accumulating in the cloud, will become a cruel book if it is the only one available.”
In early March, I spent 3 day with Paolo Lugari, legendary founder of the Gaviotas settlement in southeastern Colombia. He expressed his opinion on about everything. The one opinion that surprise me was his reaction to a question about the digital age and the Internet.
The Internet was of little interest to him. He could see little use for it as it relates to Gaviotas. In fact, he indicated that the Gaviotas community was not connected. He referred to the modern-day’s “autistic society” with less and less face-to-face communications. Personal contact is important to him.
I don’t understand his reaction for a number of reasons, principally because I would think that the Internet could play an important role in education. Additionally, Paolo places a premium on creativity, and being able to search on what others have done would make for more efficient interventions and innovations.
A letter from Darrill Andries in NG (Apr 2010):
“The Hadza (or Tanzania) are our past, and we are, on a technological time line, the latest advanced human society. During our travel in time from there to here, I wonder when, if ever, our ancestors had the optimal balance of health, security, comfort, and the “Hadza effect.” No doubt this effect is imprinted in all humans; it has just gotten buried in all of our schedules, time crunches, emails, etc. While modern societies have minimized what seemingly plagues the Hadza, your excellent article (and those amazing Hadza faces) illuminates those things we gave up long ago.”
While the Amish are famous for what they don’t do (drive cars, use electricity, have telephones in their homes, etc.), they are becoming well-known for what they do well: small business. The reasons for their successes are examined in a book titled “Success Made Simple: An Inside Look at Why Amish Businesses Thrive.” Some of the basic attributes of their businesses include: (1) bosses never ask employees to do things that they wouldn’t do themselves; (2) the detailed craftmanship of their work; and (3) they have a rigorous work ethic.
The Amish leave school after the 8th grade and eschew the Internet. Yet their success proves that you don’t need an NBA to run an effective small business. According to Andrea Sachs in Time Magazine (4 Apr 10, p. Global 4): “There’s life in commerce for those more dedicated to the Golden Rule than the golden calf.”