Wikipedia - Lauren

1. I think the consensus of our class is that very early in our school years teachers have made the conscious decision that Wikipedia is the researcher’s devil. My schooling was no different. I’ve been constantly pushed away from using Wikipedia because of the one thing that makes it so amazing (to everyone else in the world besides teachers), that anyone can edit it. I think this feature is truly creative and a great idea, but this is what apparently makes it so-called “unreliable and non credible”. this is the reason why I haven’t had much experience with Wikipedia. In defense of the website, and Ryan mentioned he did this same thing, I would sometimes use the site to verify and compare things I saw elsewhere on the internet. This came in really handy because even if someone edits a Wiki entry to something false, since the site is so popularly used, in most cases some other anonymous changes it back to the correct information within a couple of days.

2. I very strongly think that Wikipedia cannot replace expertise. What makes me think this is that people will never stop wanting to go back to a person to person situation. Many technologies have advanced throughout the years but they haven’t overcome entire markets because either people are stuck in their ways or they enjoy the contact of other human beings. That’s how we’re built. There are two arguments I can think of that relate to this, one being something I’m learning in another class. We’re learning all about print and how the internet, iPads, and Kindles, etc, are somewhat eliminating the need to actually have something tangible printed such as books. The discussion always leads to “no matter how digital we get, print will always live on”. Another example is the one that comes up so often because of how it’s affecting our generation. People can sit at home, play games, watch videos, have conversations over the internet, and never find a need to go outside. But I arguethat it does not matter how wrapped up in technology our world gets, we will never stop participating in society in person. We will never stop having that need to actually have experts with special expertise.

3. My personal habits consist of sharing some opinions on certain things that I think merit comments, but despite my lack of contributing, I know exactly why others do it so often. Speaking of people sharing their own opinions online, Bilton says “Sharing has become a reflex action when people find an interesting video, link or story.” This statement just stood out to me because it couldn’t get anymore true. Tell me the last time you went to a site, saw something hilarious, and DIDN’T want everyone to know you laughed at your screen for five minutes, and I’ll show you a bear that doesn’t crap in the woods. Another amazing quote of his is when he said “Most of us do this to some degree. We are no longer just consumers of content, we have become curators of it too.” This is why we share. This is why we edit. This is why we spend our time. We want to create something, we want others to know we’ve created it, and the internet gives us the power to do that. It lets us create comments, articles, stories, designs, photos, etc, and it also let’s us share it with friends, family, our state, country, even the world. This is one thing that the human race will never cease to want. The want to create and share has been in our veins since the dawn of time and it’s just taken us this long to figure out ways of distributing our personal messages to everyone who has the tools to access them.