September 6th, 2006
Perpetual questioning is the price of liberty
In More on wikipedia and expertise and gatekeepers and quality, JP Rangaswami says regarding Jaron Lanier’s Digital Maoism:
Let me end by saying that any medium of expression has the capacity to be subverted into a propaganda machine. The internet is not a medium of expression, it is a place. A marketplace. Of conversations. And so it has a capacity for dissent that is unrivalled.That’s why crowds can be wise. It is in the capacity for dissent, and the free exercising of that capacity, that collective wisdom is formed.
Regarding the comment That’s why crowds can be wise: The feature of crowds that diminishes dissent, especially reasoned dissent, in favor of energy, of will and power, is also why crowds can be deeply unwise.
It’s not an either/or question of old vs. new mindset, nor even a dialectic of the two in which one eventually triumphs because it has to; instead the rise of the conversational market signals a paradox as old as human society is at work again. We have so many options if we open our eyes to them. There’s no need to assume one way is the right way.
How do we get the best of every system without making all systems other than our favored one the Enemy? I believe the answer is not to be arbitrary about any system’s value and question everything, though Jaron’s as good a place to start as any.
Hannah Arendt wrote in The Promise of Politics: "Politics is based on the fact of human plurality…. Politics deals with the coexistence and association of different men…. Instead of engendering a human being, we try to create man in our own likeness." The emphases are Arendt’s and the juxtaposition is important to thinking about the old/new trope in JP’s posting. Crowds can be wise, but that doesn’t mean they are wise (and I believe JP would agree).
By the way, I agree with Dan that reading JP is critical to getting what’s going on with social software and the enterprise.
Mitch Ratcliffe is a veteran journalist, media executive and entrepreneur. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Subscribe to Rational Rants via Email alerts or RSS.
| 09/06/06
