Articles on Google and Wikipedia
September 12th, 2008
Good morning, readers, and happy Friday!
Doing my usual daily perusal of Bookforum.com a few days ago, I found the following articles.
The first is “The society of the query and the Googlization of our lives: A tribute to Joseph Weizenbaum,” by Geert Lovink. The abstract reads:
“There is only one way to turn signals into information, through interpretation”, wrote the computer critic Joseph Weizenbaum. As Google’s hegemony over online content increases, argues Geert Lovink, we should stop searching and start questioning.
Lovink offers some interesting insights and criticisms of the Google model, and why we should question it, as Google moves into its second decade of existence.
In the second article, “Early response to false claims in Wikipedia,” P.D. Magnus writes:
A number of studies have assessed the reliability of entries in the Wikipedia at specific times. One important difference between the Wikipedia and traditional media, however, is the dynamic nature of its entries. An entry assessed today might be substantially extended or reworked tomorrow. This study paper assesses the frequency with which small, inaccurate changes are quickly corrected.
I’m not sure that this article will sway skeptics, but it does offer some additional empirical evidence that minor errors in Wikipedia are corrected quickly.
September 16th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Hi Jason. Interesting thoughts. This article leads me to actually be thankful for Wikipedia and the fact that anyone at anytime can challenge what is posted there. My brother who is at Harvard Online dropped a few funny entries in Wikipedia last year claiming to be the “greatest beer drinker” and he was quickly edited out. The self promotional spam that flooded Google’s new “wiki” called Knol is further testiment that we need Wikipedia with it’s free access to edit. Knol spam will never get edited out. Wikipedia has a chance to be spam free and closely resembling the truth.
September 16th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Hi Scott,
You’re welcome! I agree. Wikipedia, for all its faults, does strive to maintain a level of accuracy such that errors, falsehood, and garbage get weeded out quickly. I agree that the same may not turn out to be the case Google’s Knol. Lots of big questions surrounding Google and how it’s taking over our online lives, for better and for worse. And these are questions we should be asking, pointedly, rather than letting Google dictate to us how the online world morphs.