http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/
lanier06_index.html
Apologies if you’ve seen this too many times now, but it is really worth the read. Actually, the important bit is not just the initial article by Jaron Lanier (“DIGITAL MAOISM:
The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism“, though you do have to read it for the rest to make sense) but more the ensuing discussion by the likes of Yochai Benkler, Clay Shirky, Esther Dyson, Jimmy Wales, George Dyson, and Howard Rheingold.
I especially liked Benkler’s, Shirky’s and Dyson’s responses. Lanier’s piece seems shaky, and, as a number of commentators point out, over-generalizes and actually mis-characterizes Wikipedia’s processes. And yet his piece still resonates with many of the commentators because it picks up on both over-hyped terms (the “hive mind”) and some real phenomenom of both the web and user generated content and challenges us to think about them. What emerges is some really interesting commentary on the individual in the networked world, collective action, collectivism, voting versus persuasion and bottom up versus top-down systems that is incredibly pertinent to those of us trying to envision and build new technologies for learning, thinking and collaborating. – SWL