Rigel ([info]rigelkitty) wrote,
@ 2008-04-27 16:38:00
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Current mood: contemplative


Truth: Can You Handle It? Better Yet: Do You Know It When You See It?

For the Google generation, what happens to the concepts of truth and knowledge in a user-generated world of information saturation?

...Without peer review, it's so easy to be wrong, and for your wrongness to become the top Google hit on a subject, and for your wrongness to be repeated by other people who think it's right, until everyone decides that it's raining in Phoenix.

Andrew Keen describes it as "the cult of the amateur" in his same-named book. Stephen Colbert called it "wikiality" -- meaning, "a reality where, if enough people agree with a notion, it must be true."

Information specialists call it the death of information literacy.

Felipe Fernández-Armesto, a Tufts University historian and author of "Truth: A History and a Guide for the Perplexed," has recently noticed something very odd: "Information has replaced knowledge," he says, "and the truth of that information no longer seems to matter as much."


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Well,
[info]graysoul
2008-04-30 08:44 pm UTC (link)
Wikipedia, specifically, isn't about truth. It specifically disallows original research. It is about references to peer reviewed journals, which presumably are doing the literacy part.

"Information Specialists" make me very suspicious... they want to charge a professional fee to dispense information. They give no better guarantee of correctness than an enthusiastic amateur. AND they have a snotty attitude.

None of this would have happened if the academics hadn't blown the whole field of "increase and dissemination of knowledge" long ago.
-GraySoul

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Re: Well,
[info]rigelkitty
2008-04-30 10:59 pm UTC (link)
Entries on Wikipedia that are not based strictly in fact like hard science or raw math, are sometimes guarded religiously by devotees of the subject, ensuring that only reference material that meets their viewpoints or perspectives are included or slanted towards.

Additionally, there's plenty of information there that hasn't been sourced or has been cherry-picked from a source, to say nothing of the bias of the original sources themselves. The way information is presented is often spun to guide a reader's interpretation. Worst of all, Wikipedia forces unrealistic balance, where detractors, no matter how few, are required to receive equal time with the truth, no matter how plentiful, while advocates are turned away as partisan and ineligible.

In most cases, the only people who contribute to any given Wikipedia entries are those who have a vested interest in the subject matter one way or another, which should instantly make them ineligible to be an impartial contributor. Truth by volume, literally and figuratively, has not been a good idea.

As for "information specialists", they have one advantage over an enthusiastic amateur: impartiality, lacking a vested interest one way or the other in the information they deliver.

Edited at 2008-04-30 11:00 pm UTC

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