Pop(ular) Knows Best

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I consider sites like Wikipedia as the “Top 40” of information-based documents. When I want to find out about topics relevant to contemporary mainstream culture, it is a great resource.  If I want to find out about anything else, it is a starting point at best. Personally, if I want to know about anything in detail, I'll ask an expert. The article “The Social Life of Documents” discusses documentation as the inevitable vehicle of exchanging information in a literary culture. Authors John Seely Brown and Paul Dugiud identify the World Wide Web as the ultimate social document (1996).  I find their observations give an assessment of the Internet as so dynamic it takes on almost organismic characteristics.  For me, this implication is most fascinating because it speaks to the ability a unified community has to synergistically create something that can take on a life of its own.  I believe this is both a drawback and benefit to “crowdsourced” information.

If we think critically about it, any body of knowledge made public can become “common knowledge.”  I think critics of documents like Wikis, have reservations about certain knowledge being perpetuated by common circles.  For example, in most academic settings, students are often admonished not to use Wikipedia as an information source.  They instead should find “peer-reviewed” articles, books, and encyclopedias.  The assumption is that because the information put forth is from those directly invested in the survival of their respective professions, industries and institutions, that information will thus be a sound characterization for learning purposes.  The main ingredient in this model is control. In these peer-reviewed documents, the practitioners and participants are part of what are essentially sub-cultures. Therefore they have to mold the identity of the culture through the activities taking place and the sharing of information relevant to these activities.  This type of control is very important for those whose engagement with any topic is connected to their personal livelihoods. It keeps the life and integrity of the culture by establishing standards for both preservation and growth. However, under this paradigm, there is potential for elitism, which ultimately compromises cultural growth.

Culture is inherently both preservative and reflexive in that it requires certain conditions to become established and grow, but still adapts to changes with out losing its fundamental identity.  This is where the open source information tools are especially useful.  When I was in elementary school, I finally found practical use for the two encyclopedia sets my mother had bought in the 80s.  I used these extensively for school projects and reports.

Before grade four, I had only casually leafed through the massive volumes out of curiosity, after all they looked important. In five short years from using these volumes, they were quickly out of date. At school, interactive CD-Rom encyclopedias became the norm, quickly followed by “online” versions where the information was updated regularly and without having to buy another 30-volume collection of leather bound books.

The Internet made knowledge accessible, affordable and easier to understand through a myriad of cross-referencing options. Open source documents like forums and wikis all provide a substantial introduction to information on any topic.  With that type of knowledge at our fingertips, we have more power then ever to choose our community, and choose how we as individuals can contribute to growth of our local and larger communities.

The drawback of this openness is that at the end of the day, individuals may only seek to expand their own communities and therefore bias is inevitable (Royal & Kapila, 2009, p.146). In this case, crowdsourced information sites can be a platform for expressing cyber-bullying, malicious, extremist, and sensationalist ideologies and opinions.  Still, as the Internet (at least in theory) is an open landscape, these are not inherently out place. While we as users may not always be exposed to what we want, we have choices to engage what we want, and to challenge what we want. As culture and commerce are converge in these digital spaces (Dijick & Nieborg, 2009, p 863), the individual and the collective body will require continuous re-examination.  Crowdsourced information in many ways, keeps us all honest, and "in the know".