I suddenly realized that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, that every symbol and combination of symbol led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with truly a meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang holiness is forever being created.
Joseph Knecht, Master of The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse
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It’s been a long time since I read this book by Hesse, but I remember enjoying it. I read a lot of Hesse in highschool and was highly impressed at the time. This quote reminds me of a passage from Philip K. Dick’s Exegesis. PKD was describing a mystical interaction with divine information. Every thought, every question, every possibility led to infinity. There was no final conclusion. To read the this PKD passage, see my blog post PKD on God as Infinity.
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Readers of blogs like this are witnessing a shift of intellectual authority from the traditional “expert” to the broader public. This is nowhere more tellingly illustrated than by Wikipedia, which has roughly 300,000 volunteer contributors every month.
What makes the mobilization of “crowd wisdom” intellectually powerful is that the technology of the Web makes it so easy for even amateurs to access a growing fraction of the body of human knowledge. The value of traditional expert authority is itself being diluted by the new incentive structure created by information technology that militates against what is deep and nuanced in favour of what is fast and stripped-down.
The result is the growing disintermediation of experts and gatekeepers of virtually all kinds. The irony is that experts have been the source of most of the nuggets of knowledge that the crowd now draws upon – for example, news and political bloggers depend heavily on a relatively small number of sources of professional journalism, just as many Wikipedia articles assimilate prior scholarship. The system works because it is able to mine intellectual capital. This suggests that today’s cult of the amateur will ultimately be self-limiting and will require continuous fresh infusions of more traditional forms of expert knowledge.
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I would point out that the intelligence of the internet age isn’t merely parasitic, but rather is a levelling of the playing field. Instead of being passive receivers, people now interact with their media.
Two examples.
First, news media follows closely twitter and the blogosphere to catch new trends and breaking news. Reporters aren’t usually the first people to be on a scene and with cellphones firsthand reporting can potentially come from anyone.
Second, bloggers often are very dedicated researchers who aren’t limited by the financial obligations of working for a media company. Many bloggers are highly educated and trained in various fields. Even if they don’t have the title of expert, they may act in that capacity. Bloggers often do original analysis and uncover new data, and mainstream reporters do sometimes cite bloggers. Bloggers don’t often get much respectability, but neither did the early muckrakers who were the earliest investigative reporters.
By being outside of the mainstream, bloggers have a different perspective. Sometimes bloggers are reporting on issues and events that get almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media.
The value of traditional expert authority isn’t being diluted, but it is being challenged. I would, however, argue that this strengthens expert authority by holding it to an even higher standard.
Objective analysis shows that Wikipedia articles on science and history are as reliable as encyclopedias (I would argue that they may be more reliable in some ways as they’re constantly being updated). Also, Wikipedia cites many external sources that often are directly linked and so one can judge for themselves rather than solely relying on an expert. In the long run, Wikipedia will on average become more reliable than a traditional printed encyclopedia. Furthermore, Wikipedia has stringent standards and so acts as a training ground for any person to learn how to determine the validity of information.
So, the web doesn’t result in “the growing disintermediation of experts and gatekeepers”. Rather, it increases mediation and creates better methods of gatekeeping. Traditional experts still play a part, but they no longer dominate the discussion.
The above blog linked to an article by Peter Nicholson. The following blog is a response to that article. The opinion of stated below resonates with my own sense of this emerging information age.
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What has led me to rant about this pet peeve of mine, is Peter Nicholson’s, Globe and Mail article, “Information – rich and attention – poor” (09-09-12). Blaming the digital age he declares,
“In becoming information rich, we have become attention poor… [E]conomics teaches that the counterpart of every new abundance is a new scarcity – in this case the scarcity of human time and attention.”
[...]There is nothing wrong with the abundance of information created by digital technology. Yes, I realise some of it is slim, but that’s okay, because there are ways of accessing deeper knowledge as well. I personally have not experienced an attention deficit as a result of the “knowledge abundance”. What I have experienced is a thrill at being able to access so much information in such a short time. I do not fear what Nicholson refers to as the “24-hour knowledge cycle”, the ability to access news 24/7. I relish in it.
Nicholson writes about the changing market for knowledge. He states:
“When the effective shelf life of a document (or any information product) shrinks, fewer resources will be invested in its creation. This is because the period during which the product is likely to be read or referred to is too short to repay a large allocation of scarce time and skill in its production. As a result the ‘market’ for depth is narrowing.”
When you look at what is happening in the publishing world you have to agree with the first part of his comment, that because a “news product” has a short life it’s not financially feasible to invest heavily in it. However, I disagree with his conclusion, that the result is that the market for depth is narrowing. Hey, I’m part of the market and I’m not narrowing, nor are my eleven year old students who’s thirst for knowledge is unquenchable. The desire for “depth” is not diminished by the abundance of knowledge. In fact, it is enriched by it.
Filed under: blogging, Gnosticism, Humanity, Philosophy, science, Sociopolitical | Tagged: authorities, blogosphere, crowd wisdom, Exegesis, experts, facts, God, Hermann Hesse, infinity, information, internet, knowledge, media, news, Philip K. Dick, PKD, The Glass Bead Game, truth, twitter, wisdom | Leave a Comment »
Marmalade said
My experiment began just now. I posted a blog about blogging on each site.
Live Journal actually was more confusing than I expected. I posted or thought I did, but couldn’t figure out if it actually posted or not. It showed as posted. Nonetheless, when I looked for it,I couldn’t find itwith my previous posts. Maybe there is a lag for posts to show. I’ll have to check it later.
Word Press was also confusing. Both Live Journal and Word Press were very cluttered. On Word Press, I couldn’t even figure out how to place a title on my post. I spent 10 minutes trying to figure it out, and ended up posting it without a title.
Blogger was easier. The page did freeze up, but that might’ve been connection issues unrelated to the site. I opened a new window and it seemed fine. One significant problem was that I wanted to remove a paragraph, but was unable. The “cut” option seemed to be disabled in my IE7 browser. So, I had to manually delete it using the “backspace” button. I’d hope that a major browser would work with a major site like that. I have some problems with Internet Exploerer here on Gaia, but I have lower expectations for this site.
The last site was My Opera. It was simple and easy. It has many options and yet isn’t cluttered. It felt very intuitive and posted without a single problem.
My Opera wins the first round of the experiment. Its hard to say who came in second, but offhand I’ll give second place to Blogger.
Nicole said
it will be cool to see how the experiment progresses!
starlight said
LOL…you’re a trip Ben…i was wondering what you been up to…joy*
Marmalade said
Nice to see you both. Happy Happy Joy Joy
Because all of the praise I read about it, my guess is that I’ll like Word Press if I ever figure it out. I’m not sure why I couldn’t find the section for the title. I downloaded the new version (2.7 I believe) and maybe I was just experiencing a glitch. I’ll try it again. Someone from work brought up their Word Press page for posting and it looked entirely different. It might also be browser related. I’ll try my other browsers as part of this experiment.
I checked back with Live Journal. I still couldn’t find the entry I tried to post with the other previous entries. I kept the window open, and I was able to go back to the page that showed the posting. It seems to be posted somewhere. Its possible that Live Journal has the capacity for posting on multiple pages and somehow I unintentionally posted it on another page. If so, I need to learn how to control which page it posts to.
Marmalade said
Second Round:
I used Google Chrome this time. I didn’t have any of the problems I had last time. I like Google Chrome. It seems to have less compatability issues with the blogging sites.
Its strange with Word Press. The appearance of it was the same. I put the title where I tried to put it last time, but for unknown reasons it allowed the title to appear this time. I do like the Category option Word Press. The closest thing I had to a problem was that I couldn’t sign into my Word Press blog on the page of my blog. Instead, I had to go to the main page to sign in.
Nobody wins first place this time. This round is a tie, but I’m thinking I’m going to learn to like Word Press more and more.
Marmalade said
There is one thing that this test is making clear. Gaia competesfairly wellwith the otherblogging sites. There aren’t as many choices here in terms of functions, but there is still plenty one can do. Gaia is very simple and intuitive. I’ve never had any major problems in blogging here.
Nicole said
that’s good to know, about Gaia and Google Chrome. I have the latter but haven’t used it much yet, force of habit.
Marmalade said
Yeah, Google Chrome seems decent. I haven’t had any major issues like I had with Internet Exploer 8 which made my virus scan non-functional. It took me a while to realize there was a problem. I hope I didn’t pick up any viruses. IE8=BAD!!!
The problem with Google Chrome is that it has compatability issues with playing videos. Whereas I’ve never had problems with videos with Internet Explorer. You just can’t have everything. I guessI have to choose whether you like blogging or watching videos more.
Annemieke said
“I couldn’t sign into my Word Press blog on the page of my blog. Instead, I had to go to the main page to sign in.”
Yes, very strange indeed. I mostly stay logged in, but when for some reason I have to sign in, I always wonder where I have to do that again.
“Gaia is very simple and intuitive.”
Totally agree with that. No matter how good I find WordPress, intuitive would not be a term to use. Although I am more and more ‘getting it’ lately.
I also like Google Chrome and at the moment I use it together with Internet Explorer. For some reason I like IE still best for bookmarking sites. But I noticed it is good to use other browsers to see how it all looks, because sites can look rather different with other browsers sometimes.
I so like that you share this kind of struggles. I am going through the same processes at times. But I totally love it.
Marmalade said
Its getting close to bedtime for me, but I shall comment first.
Yes, Annemieke, I prefer Internet Exploer overall. Maybe its because I’ve used it the most and I’m familiar with it. I never had major issues with it until I downloaded IE8.
You like that I share this kind of struggle… is that you’re way of saying you don’t want to hear me share my struggles withchanging my cats’ litter box? Sadly, neither Google Chrome nor Internet Exploer is compatible with the litter box. I should get a virtual cat with a virtual litter box. It would immensely simplify my life.
Centria said
I love your analysis here. I was convinced blogger (blogspot? are they the same thing?) was going to be the best option. But within a day of posting there, I switched allegiance to wordpress. Even though some of the layouts are confusing, it seems easier for others to find your work through the categories and tags. No one has even found the blogger posting. But wordpress has proved more visible and likeable. Gaia, though, is simple and intuitive. It’s still preferable in many ways….
Marmalade said
Blogger and blogspot are related but not the same… both relate to blogging with Google. Its technically more appropriate to say blogspot I suppose, but for some reason I was using the Blogger name instead. I was meaning the same thing anyways.
You seem attracted to Word Press for the same reasons as I. The category and tag system will be very helpful as I gather more blogs. I’m glad they also help others to find my blogs. That will be part of my comparison experiment. I’ll see which of my blogs get the most comments and what kinds of commenters they attract.
Marmalade said
Third Round:
This time I used the Opera browser which is related to the Opera blogging site. It was a very easy to use browser except for one factor. When I tried to copy and paste from my Gaia blog, it didn’t carry over the hyperlinks. Both Google Chrome and Internet Explorer carry over hyperlinks.
I ended the third round at that point. So, none of the blogging sites were a winner in this round, but the Opera browser was the loser.
Marmalade said
For the time being, I take my conclusion back for the Third Round. The hyperlink copy/paste problem seems to be failing on all of my browsers. That is very odd because it was just working. Is it something to do with my computer? Or are the various browsers somehow causing problems for eachother? I hope I can figure this out.
Nicole said
oooh, that’s a very annoying problem. really odd!
Marmalade said
I’m bringing my experiment into a less formal mode. I decided to drop LIve Journal from the experiment just because the set up is somewhat confusing and not aesthetically pleasing. I’m going to continue to use the other 3 for a while. At the moment, I can’t say I entirely favorany one of themover the rest.
Nicole said
ok. i see you’re still having that words running into each other trouble!