Firstly, the notion that technology is in a co-evolving relationship with our cognition is actually gaining traction within psychology; see Andy Clark's books "Natural Born Cyborgs" and "Supersizing the Mind" for an overview. The point being, that this interaction between technology and cognition is being actively studied. It WON'T be a simple interaction, and its full implications are unclear.
Secondly, the idea that crowd-sourcing or democratising knowledge practices can produce reliable knowledge has a mathematical model: Condorcet's jury theorem. But there is a catch...
If the bulk of the population is in fact uninformed (or lazy, or selfish, or just plain wrong) then outsourcing fails miserably, and things converge on nonsense or half-truths or falsehoods. And given that we know there are cognitive biases that means that people can be consistently wrong about some things (See Daniel Kahnemans book "thinking fast, thinking slow") then there are good reasons for thinking there are potential ways that crowd-sourcing really does "make us stupid." Not always, but sometimes. Not all issues. But some.
So three. The trick is then working out a suitable "crowd." The notion of the solitary expert is bollocks. All scientists stand on the shoulders of others; they are innovative nodes for a "crowd-sourced" set of information. Its just that the innovative node assesses a unique crowd. That crowd might be a subset of all available people, or it might be all experts. Part of the problem with the Tea Party style belief systems is that their "crowd" --their information sources they gather from-- are all biased, and all feeding back on each other, offering a reflection of their own views.
In the end then, the most important aspect of this article is NOT the McLuhan stuff, that is frankly a red herring. Its Wikipedia's systems for handling disputes, its constant patrolling, and its arbitration processes. Its these systems that ensure that the "crowd" that is being sourced is reasonable, unbiased, and not a solitary individual with an agenda. Its this "crowd" control that make Wikipedia reliable.
On Wikipedia And The Death Of The Expert
Firstly, the notion that technology is in a co-evolving relationship with our cognition is actually gaining traction within psychology; see Andy Clark's books "Natural Born Cyborgs" and "Supersizing the Mind" for an overview. The point being, that this interaction between technology and cognition is being actively studied. It WON'T be a simple interaction, and its full implications are unclear.
Secondly, the idea that crowd-sourcing or democratising knowledge practices can produce reliable knowledge has a mathematical model: Condorcet's jury theorem. But there is a catch...
If the bulk of the population is in fact uninformed (or lazy, or selfish, or just plain wrong) then outsourcing fails miserably, and things converge on nonsense or half-truths or falsehoods. And given that we know there are cognitive biases that means that people can be consistently wrong about some things (See Daniel Kahnemans book "thinking fast, thinking slow") then there are good reasons for thinking there are potential ways that crowd-sourcing really does "make us stupid." Not always, but sometimes. Not all issues. But some.
So three. The trick is then working out a suitable "crowd." The notion of the solitary expert is bollocks. All scientists stand on the shoulders of others; they are innovative nodes for a "crowd-sourced" set of information. Its just that the innovative node assesses a unique crowd. That crowd might be a subset of all available people, or it might be all experts. Part of the problem with the Tea Party style belief systems is that their "crowd" --their information sources they gather from-- are all biased, and all feeding back on each other, offering a reflection of their own views.
In the end then, the most important aspect of this article is NOT the McLuhan stuff, that is frankly a red herring. Its Wikipedia's systems for handling disputes, its constant patrolling, and its arbitration processes. Its these systems that ensure that the "crowd" that is being sourced is reasonable, unbiased, and not a solitary individual with an agenda. Its this "crowd" control that make Wikipedia reliable.