May 31, 2006
DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism
Jaron Lanier at Edge.org:
The hive mind is for the most part stupid and boring. Why pay attention to it?
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.
More here.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 04:16 PM | Permalink
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Since when was it NOT incumbent on each individual to be rational enough and well enough educated to judge for him or herself what new information to incorportate into their picture of the world and which new claims, political or commercial, to honor and which to reject?
Citizenship: it has always been a more difficult job than advertised. And the first task of the job is to be aware of the difficulties.
Posted by: greensmile | Jun 2, 2006 2:13:36 PM
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