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Collective Authority
Came across a piece by Larry Sanger, "Who Says We Know: On the New Politics of Knowledge." Here's a quote:
But we are now confronting a new politics of knowledge, with the rise of the Internet and particularly of the collaborative Web—the Blogosphere, Wikipedia, Digg, YouTube, and in short every website and type of aggregation that invites all comers to offer their knowledge and their opinions, and to rate content, products, places, and people. It is particularly the aggregation of public opinion that instituted this new politics of knowledge. In the 90s, lots of people posted essays on their personal home pages, put up fan websites, and otherwise "broadcasted themselves." But what might have been merely vain and silly a decade ago is now, thanks to aggregation of various sorts, a contribution to an online mass movement. The collected content and ratings resulting from our individual efforts give us a sort of collective authority that we did not have ten years ago.
I really like this idea of collective authority. The next challenge in information literacy and scholarship is making this leap into truly understanding the impact of collective authority.
But we are now confronting a new politics of knowledge, with the rise of the Internet and particularly of the collaborative Web—the Blogosphere, Wikipedia, Digg, YouTube, and in short every website and type of aggregation that invites all comers to offer their knowledge and their opinions, and to rate content, products, places, and people. It is particularly the aggregation of public opinion that instituted this new politics of knowledge. In the 90s, lots of people posted essays on their personal home pages, put up fan websites, and otherwise "broadcasted themselves." But what might have been merely vain and silly a decade ago is now, thanks to aggregation of various sorts, a contribution to an online mass movement. The collected content and ratings resulting from our individual efforts give us a sort of collective authority that we did not have ten years ago.
I really like this idea of collective authority. The next challenge in information literacy and scholarship is making this leap into truly understanding the impact of collective authority.
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Comment by Carolyn Foote on April 22, 2007 at 9:54pm
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Great term! When you look at all the edits on Wikipedia, it's fascinating watching the users moving towards that collective meaning/authority.
I picked up a free galley book at TLA, the Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen--the book is definitely the opposite of Wikinomics. The subtitle implies that the collective authority is threatening our economy and culture. I haven't had time to read it yet, but I'll be interested in seeing the approach(and no, I'm not doing this as a book review, but I just think it's interesting in relation to your post!)
My sense is that this collective authority has been mostly positive for our democracy, and for information gathering, and for business. The transparency it has created is changing our culture.
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