Wiki-gurgitation

[emeraldfool]

(Before she says anything - yes, Atomica coined the phrase, and I stole it off her )



We live in an age where so long as you have internet access and about 2 minutes of reading-time, you can essentially know anything. Wikipaedia, as I'm sure you know, is designed around communities, meaning every line in every entry for everything under the sun has usually been debated by the respective community and/or forum, and decided to be most accurate.

Personally, it seems really unfair to those of us who really do know everything

I can just see it in the near-future: Eyeglasses like those that the politicians use to display their speeches, connected to a tiny mobile phone with internet access, and the latest voice recognition software. The phone would be able to pick out keywords in your dinner conversation and display the wikipaedia entries for them in real-time. All you have to do is stare into space for a few seconds and you'll know everything.

A world where everybody has equal intelligence... could there be anything more horrible?

[miadon]

god I feel another debate coming on o.O

So will say one thing:

Intelligence is different from just knowing stuff.

You might know every single King and Queen of England and Scotland in the correct order. But does that make you intelligent? or does it just mean you have a good memory?

[Xordan]

Equal knowledge maybe, but far from equal intelligence.

<.> Blah beaten to it.

[Karyuu]

Keep in mind that having access to knowledge doesn't make you intelligent - it's putting that knowledge to use that matters. If you hear an unfamiliar word at a dinner party and tell a computer chip in your glasses to look it up, that's just awesome. I personally can't wait for such technology to come about, and I don't see the danger of such progress - where do you?

You might be interested in Dan Simmons' Hyperion books. They're my absolute favorite of the sci-fi genre and the world is rich with the sort of gadgets you mention.

[zanzibar]

Wikipaedia isn't a good source of information.  It's just a convenient one.


You cannot know everything about anything after merely 2 minutes.


I don't see how easy access to information makes life unfair for you.


I see access to information as a good thing, so long as it's accurate information - and not instructions on how to build an atomic bomb etc.  If there is a diversity of opinion on a particular subject, a person should be wise enough to explore all the differing opinions before feeling that they are educated on the topic.

[emeraldfool]

Keep in mind that having access to knowledge doesn't make you intelligent - it's putting that knowledge to use that matters. If you hear an unfamiliar word at a dinner party and tell a computer chip in your glasses to look it up, that's just awesome. I personally can't wait for such technology to come about, and I don't see the danger of such progress - where do you?

You might be interested in Dan Simmons' Hyperion books. They're my absolute favorite of the sci-fi genre and the world is rich with the sort of gadgets you mention.

I see what you mean, but what I mean is that rather than having a human conversation, it's two people spouting off paragraphs or re-wording facts and figures compiled by other people. It's borrowed 'knowledge'.

Now, I know most people think of intelligence as people's cognitive ability, or the ability to manipulate information and make sense out of it, and that's essentially right, but ultimately that's all intelligence would be if technology like this got around - there would no longer be varying degrees of intelligence among the common people: it would be a simple division between those who understand the simple user-friendly language of wikipaedia and those who do not (and then, of course, the absolute experts and geniuses who would run wikipaedia and provide the knowledge).

Because - considering that wikipaedia got better and better over time - there wouldn't be much need for schools or training, at least on the basic level, for nearly every skill or profession would have context-sensitive on-the-fly in-depth instructions which could be accessed in minutes. (No longer do you memorise complex procedures from textbooks - simply say "Wikipaedia, show me brain surgery. Frontal Lobe Tumor Removal. How about... the latest techniques from the Indian Neuroscience Association. Thanks Wiki!" - because what's the difference between taking a course in real-life, and doing an audio-video interactive ultra-realistic simulation where not only does the best Neurology expert in the world guide you through the procedure personally, but you actually get to perform it in real-time on a virtual brain as many times as you want for practice.)


...
I forgot what my argument against this was


Anyway, the important thing is - I find it very annoying when people obviously just skim through a Wiki article on a topic and then post as if they were born knowing about it...
I'm sure we've all done it at one time or another, but it just seems... wrong.





Oh yeah, and I've heard of Hyperion. I've been meaning to read a nice sci-fi novel... lately it's been mostly crime and thrillers... In fact, I don't think I've ever read a decent sci-fi... I'll keep a look-out.

[Karyuu]

It's not just about wikipedia - there are other sites on the internet that are far more reliable sources of information. If someone browses through a topic and then comes in talking as though they've studied it their whole lives, that's their problem. It's not the fault of the technology nor access to such information. Personally I think that the more and quicker access we have to various material, the better. And if in the distant future "schools" in the traditional sense will be obsolete, is that really so bad? A lot of things have been made obsolete by expanding technology over the last century, and aside from fanatical contemporary luddites most agree that our lives have been significantly improved.

My own personal concern is over the growing dependency on technologies that can and do break down. While it's true that machinery and electronics are being enhanced and strengthened all the time, thinking about a massive collapse is rather frightening. But it's part of the risks everyone is aware of, I believe, particularly those who work on the various technologies - and thus the goals for endless betterment.

[lordraleigh]

It's not just about wikipedia - there are other sites on the internet that are far more reliable sources of information. If someone browses through a topic and then comes in talking as though they've studied it their whole lives, that's their problem. It's not the fault of the technology nor access to such information. Personally I think that the more and quicker access we have to various material, the better. And if in the distant future "schools" in the traditional sense will be obsolete, is that really so bad? A lot of things have been made obsolete by expanding technology over the last century, and aside from fanatical contemporary luddites most agree that our lives have been significantly improved.

My own personal concern is over the growing dependency on technologies that can and do break down. While it's true that machinery and electronics are being enhanced and strengthened all the time, thinking about a massive collapse is rather frightening. But it's part of the risks everyone is aware of, I believe, particularly those who work on the various technologies - and thus the goals for endless betterment.

"Education through the Internet can be easily controlled by Ingsoc, it is doubleplusgood!"

Malreported, doubleplusungood. Ref lead crimethink. No control ref, no oldspeak.

"Ingsoc online educsys bring goodthink n' largeinfo to proles n' comrades!
Unonline educ gone, more rations n' prolefeed! Miniplenty doubleplusgood."

[emeraldfool]

Yeah, I know, I was just sorta using wikipaedia as a metaphor for online information in general.

The thing that bothers me is that very few humans can resist the urge to appear all-knowing, especially when all they have to do is read a few paragraphs and re-phrase them. And the few people who would resist that urge would probably be seen as unintelligent. It's the idea that all this information is put up by other people, each one with their own opinions and prejudices - and we just eat it up as fact. And the more technology like this is accessible to more people, the more opinions and prejudices get dumped into the eternal pool of 'knowledge' - old Nazi farts who think the Fourth Reich is coming, people who think all non-Christians should be pitied, people suffering from mental illnesses thinking they have the answers to life - and for every opinion, there's the potential to impact upon someone.

Free speech is great and all, but it gets to the point where so many people are 'speaking freely' at once that there's no point listening.

I'd be interested to know just how much total bull-crap we actually believe because of the internet - all those interesting articles we've read could easily have been made-up on the spot. Many of them have been. What's to stop me from saying I've managed to successfully disprove evolution, or clone a human, if I make it sound really professional, complete with fabricated statistics? You better believe someone out there will believe me.

[lordraleigh]

The ironic point is that the same technology that can be used for "free speech" can be use for opposite as well.

When you're reading a book in your bedroom, who will know what is this book about?

When you're browsing a site, your IP is logged(Of course there are proxies, but look at this )

It is much easier to block access in the Internet and forbid proxy use than to hunt and erase "subversive" books in a country.
You can hide a book and the fact you readed it, but can you hide a site and the fact you browsed it?

[Karyuu]

The net is definitely a breeding ground for all sorts of misinformation as well as factual material. It's been around for ages and ages, but now since it's so easy to find, learning to weed out the false claims from actual stories is a necessary skill. At the same time, there are magazines and books and television programs made public that are already full of false information and bloated statistics. They're not hard to find. Some of them have massive followings (Sylvia Brown). So perhaps the only actual schooling we really need is Critical Thinking.

[miadon]

The net is definitely a breeding ground for all sorts of misinformation

www.uncyclopedia.org \o/

[Atomica]

Good points all around. Emmy's pretty much summed up (or long-winded, really ) what I meant with that 'wiki-regurgitation' comment (So I'll forgive ya for stealing it... for now). Mainly I was just amazed at how extensive Mr. Zanzibar's knowledge is, from porn to god-knows-what...

An' I'm surprised to see Madamemoiselle Karyuu actually getting involved in a debate... usually she's all like 'Must... hold tongue. Remain... neutral... or die.'

[emeraldfool]

The net is definitely a breeding ground for all sorts of misinformation as well as factual material. It's been around for ages and ages, but now since it's so easy to find, learning to weed out the false claims from actual stories is a necessary skill. At the same time, there are magazines and books and television programs made public that are already full of false information and bloated statistics. They're not hard to find. Some of them have massive followings (Sylvia Brown). So perhaps the only actual schooling we really need is Critical Thinking.

But that's what I mean. As more and more generations are born into the internet sub-culture, 'misinformation' and useless opinions (like the latest 'weblogging' craze) will stream in 10 times faster than 'factual material', and the internet will turn into a giant cesspool of porn and dissociative rantings.
It isn't like books in a library - the information on the internet will NEVER degrade or disappear on its own, and there's no limitations in paper, ink, publication costs, etc.
All you need is the ability to hit buttons and press 'send'.

It's bad enough as it is, with viruses, spyware, etc. to boot, and it'll only get worse...
Eventually we'll need censorship, otherwise the internet will be a giant warzone of opinions and advertising





Edit: Haha, that's a brilliant site Miadon...

[lordraleigh]

First as Miadon mentioned, and the "wikigurgitation" thing:

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia

"Eventually we will need censorship"

Q: Who will define what should and should not be censored in the Internet?
A: The way "Democracy" works, probably the government and the corporate media.

Q: What will be the consequences?
A: In U.S. for example, with things like the Patriot Act I and Patriot Act II , it may be the beggining of a long journey to censor sites that are dubbed as "terrorists" or as threats to the "democracy". South, in the Latin America, where military dictatorships were common during the Cold War, it is obvious to guess too. In other words, ask them to censor lies, they will turn the Internet in another mean of communication to broadcast exclusively their lies, like in the TV.

I hope that the Internet becomes like the Corporate Mass Media on TV. *Cough* Outfoxed

P.S.: I think I am wikigurgitating too much, 3 links just on this post