Of Social Construction and Value Creation
Nick C has a great post about Citizendium, about which Cory Doctorow and Clay Shirky have argued must work, because authority is "socially constructed".
As Nick says, this is "top-shelf guff".
Of course authority isn't social constructed - at least on the timescales on a community/network operates. Institutions like universities - the real arbiters of authority - take hundreds of years to build.
I may disagree with Nick about the relative value of Wikipedia, but he has been doing a very nice job of late in picking out the voluminous bs which is drowning 2.0 in a landfill of nonsense.
Doctorow and Shirky should be a lil more clued into the fact that the point of a community is (hyper)specialization - not some mystical social basis of authority.
Its interesting that there is this split between people who think that there are objective facts and those who think that perspective is what matters most that reoccurs in many different domains of activity.
# // Dr. Chadblog // 9:02 AM
Its interesting that there is this split between people who think that there are objective facts and those who think that perspective is what matters most that reoccurs in many different domains of activity.
# // Dr. Chadblog // 9:02 AM
I am not convinced that “communities� are good vehicles for creating knowledge (this is an interesting concept is knowledge created) and filtering knowledge. By good I mean efficient and accurate. Communities seem great for discussing knowledge, recognizing knowledge, and consuming (transferring) knowledge. Due to the power of networks “(hyper) specialization� becomes possible and we all benefit. What I think I am saying is that knowledge has already been created (I need a better word than this). Thus we do not need communities to form “Silos of Knowledge�. If we want “Silos of Knowledge� that is organized, accurate, easily accessible knowledge we need better “Knowledge Filters�.
Communities then can add value to “Silos of Knowledge� via commentaries.