Speaking of changed minds . . .

Every year John Brockman hosts the annual World Question on his Edge site. At the end of the year he asks his circle of scientists and thinkers "a question they are asking themselves." This year I suggested the question. It is: What have you changed your mind about? . . .

Much of what I believed about human nature, and the nature of knowledge, has been upended by the Wikipedia. I knew that the human propensity for mischief among the young and bored — of which there were many online — would make an encyclopedia editable by anyone an impossibility. I also knew that even among the responsible contributors, the temptation to exaggerate and misremember what we think we know was inescapable, adding to the impossibility of a reliable text. I knew from my own 20-year experience online that you could not rely on what you read in a random posting, and believed that an aggregation of random contributions would be a total mess. Even unedited web pages created by experts failed to impress me, so an entire encyclopedia written by unedited amateurs, not to mention ignoramuses, seemed destined to be junk.

Everything I knew about the structure of information convinced me that knowledge would not spontaneously emerge from data, without a lot of energy and intelligence deliberately directed to transforming it. All the attempts at headless collective writing I had been involved with in the past only generated forgettable trash. Why would anything online be any different? . . .

How wrong I was. The success of the Wikipedia keeps surpassing my expectations. Despite the flaws of human nature, it keeps getting better. Both the weakness and virtues of individuals are transformed into common wealth, with a minimum of rules and elites. It turns out that with the right tools it is easier to restore damage text (the revert function on Wikipedia) than to create damage text (vandalism) in the first place, and so the good enough article prospers and continues. With the right tools, it turns out the collaborative community can outpace the same number of ambitious individuals competing. . .

I am not the only one who has had his mind changed about this. The reality of a working Wikipedia has made a type of communitarian socialism not only thinkable, but desirable. Along with other tools such as open-source software and open-source everything, this communitarian bias runs deep in the online world.

In other words it runs deep in this young next generation. It may take several decades for this shifting world perspective to show its full colors. When you grow up knowing rather than admitting that such a thing as the Wikipedia works; when it is obvious to you that open source software is better; when you are certain that sharing your photos and other data yields more than safeguarding them — then these assumptions will become a platform for a yet more radical embrace of the commonwealth. I hate to say it but there is a new type of communism or socialism loose in the world, although neither of these outdated and tinged terms can accurately capture what is new about it.

The Wikipedia has changed my mind, a fairly steady individualist, and lead me toward this new social sphere. I am now much more interested in both the new power of the collective, and the new obligations stemming from individuals toward the collective. In addition to expanding civil rights, I want to expand civil duties. I am convinced that the full impact of the Wikipedia is still subterranean, and that its mind-changing power is working subconsciously on the global millennial generation, providing them with an existence proof of a beneficial hive mind, and an appreciation for believing in the impossible.

That's what it's done for me.

Or, as Wendell Berry says it in The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

I'm as old as Kelley and have been online longer, but I had no doubts about collaborative systems. It was always a waiting game. The ideas were far ahead of the technology. It wasn't until we had the hardware, software and networks that a significant percentage of folks could play, and that was required for the decades old ideas about such systems to be truly implemented. This stuff, our current reality, may seem newish to some but those who thought deeply back in the day have been anticipating it for half a century.

But it isn't about communitarian socialism. The very worst thing we could do would be to couple the expansion of civil rights to expanded civil duties. Duties!!! Who decides? The mob? Kelley notes that what made Wikipedia workable was the "undo" function. In his words "it is easier to restore damage[d] text (the revert function on Wikipedia) than to create damage[d] text (vandalism) in the first place". That doesn't work in meat space. There is no "undo" function for physical reality. Besides, it is the voluntary aspect of collaborations such as Wikipedia and open source whatever that fuels production. As soon as there was some duty it would degenerate into old fashioned oppressive communism and socialism. Few would do their share much less volunteer to do extra. And what they did do would be mailed in rather than executed with precision or passion.

Kelley was wrong then, and wrong now. Though he has changed his mind he still doesn't get it. The "beneficial hive mind" as he puts it has always existed. It isn't new. It didn't come into being due to ICT. ICT has made it faster, more visible even to those who aren't very good at recognizing large scale and long duration phenomena. Look at it this way:

To collaborate across time and space using footnotes, indices, bibliographies, all the dense intertextual devices of scholarly writing, always took “knowing already” how to do it, what it was for.

Since collaboration across time and space is faster and easier with ICT it is no longer restricted to scholarly communities or enthusiasts (think ham radio). The hive mind was always there, but it is now bigger and faster. It is also more diverse heuristically, a fact that has both great benefits and significant costs. Heuristically diverse groups outperform less diverse groups when they are able to communicate, but not when it's a tower of Babel.

[P]art of the problem here is that scholars, experts and authorities are largely staring with incomprehension, lassitude or horror at a Web 2.0 information world. They understood how scholarship interacted with the wider world of print and public discourse, but most understand almost nothing of the interaction now, or where (if anywhere) there is an avenue for authority-driven creation and accessing of information. I think that there is, but it’s going to take some very new ways of thinking, not just an attempt to move existing practices lock-stock-and-barrel into new environments.

Scholars, despite their pretensions, are backward and conservative. Everyone knows this but them it seems. When they get with it - perhaps when Kelley's new generation that grew up knowing rather than belatedly, and begrudgingly, admitting that such a thing as the Wikipedia works become scholars in turn - a whole shoe store will drop onto ICT. A heuristically diverse group of experts is more valuable than an equally diverse group with less knowledge. The hive mind will get some killer bees, so to speak. If and when we get some interesting artificial minds, or augmented humans, things will really get going.