John Connell: The Blog

A superb point-by-point refu­ta­tion of Michael Gorman’s Sleep of Rea­son from Clay Shirky.

I espe­cially like his ren­der­ing of the true dynamic that under­lies Wikipedia:

Wikipedia is the best known exam­ple of improved find­abil­ity of knowl­edge. Gor­man is cor­rect that an ency­clo­pe­dia is not the prod­uct of a col­lec­tive mind; this is as true of Wikipedia as of Bri­tan­nica. Gorman’s unfa­mil­iar­ity and even dis­taste for Wikipedia leads him to mis­take the dumb­est utter­ances of its most cred­u­lous observers for an authen­tic account­ing of its mech­a­nisms; peo­ple push­ing argu­ments about dig­i­tal col­lec­tivism, pro or con, know noth­ing about how Wikipedia actu­ally works. Wikipedia is the prod­uct not of col­lec­tivism but of unend­ing argu­men­ta­tion; the cor­pus grows not from har­mo­nious thought but from con­stant scrutiny and emen­da­tion.

Tech­no­rati Tags: michael gor­man, clay shirky, wikipedia

§ 2 Responses to Reason Asleep"

• Demolition  »Technology News | Venture Capital, Startups, Silicon Valley, Web 2.0 Tech says:

  June 15, 2007 at 11:21 am

  […] Source:Megite Tech­nol­ogy News: What’s Hap­pen­ing Right Now Bench­mark If Lin­den Lab’s Sec­ond Life col­lapses under the weight of its own hype, the venture’s back­ers do at least have a hedge. Bench­mark, which led an $8m financ­ing in 2004 for Philip Rosedale’s dream, has invest­ments in three of the top ten vir­tual worlds. [VC Rat­ings (Read on Source) Source:Megite Tech­nol­ogy News: What’s Hap­pen­ing Right Now A superb point-by-point demo­li­tion of Michael Gorman’s Sleep of Rea­son from Clay Shirky. I espe­cially like his ren­der­ing of the true dynamic that under­lies Wikipedia: Wikipedia is the best known exam­ple of improved find­abil­ity of knowl­edge. Gor­man is cor­rect that an ency­clo­pe­dia is not the prod­uct of a col­lec­tive mind; this is as true of … (Read on Source) Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social book­mark­ing sites where read­ers can share and dis­cover new web pages. […]

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• FBI tries to fight zombie hordes  »Technology News | Venture Capital, Startups, Silicon Valley, Web 2.0 Tech says:

  June 15, 2007 at 11:25 am

  […] Source:Megite Tech­nol­ogy News: What’s Hap­pen­ing Right Now Bench­mark If Lin­den Lab’s Sec­ond Life col­lapses under the weight of its own hype, the venture’s back­ers do at least have a hedge. Bench­mark, which led an $8m financ­ing in 2004 for Philip Rosedale’s dream, has invest­ments in three of the top ten vir­tual worlds. [VC Rat­ings (Read on Source) Source:Megite Tech­nol­ogy News: What’s Hap­pen­ing Right Now A superb point-by-point demo­li­tion of Michael Gorman’s Sleep of Rea­son from Clay Shirky. I espe­cially like his ren­der­ing of the true dynamic that under­lies Wikipedia: Wikipedia is the best known exam­ple of improved find­abil­ity of knowl­edge. Gor­man is cor­rect that an ency­clo­pe­dia is not the prod­uct of a col­lec­tive mind; this is as true of … (Read on Source) Source:Megite Tech­nol­ogy News: What’s Hap­pen­ing Right Now The FBI is con­tact­ing more than one mil­lion PC own­ers who have had their com­put­ers hijacked by cyber crim­i­nals. The ini­tia­tive is part of an ongo­ing project to thwart the use of hijacked home com­put­ers, or zom­bies, as launch plat­forms for hi-tech crimes. (Read on Source) Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social book­mark­ing sites where read­ers can share and dis­cover new web pages. […]

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