Wikinomics Reality

Although the advantages of mass collaboration in many things is well known, the assumption that it is a world changing event remains to be seen and something that I not easily subscribe to. Every idea that offers the promise of so many advantages by its very nature also offers many disadvantages. It’s the notion of equal and opposite reactions…..for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every good that is offered, there is a balancing negative. I know this sound pessimistic, but it the reality of the world….what comes up, must come down; what goes in, must come out; life is circular….you get the point.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe humankind should still be sitting in the cave chiseling on stone tablets. Mass collaboration is a great thing and something I am 100% in favor of. I just have trouble believing that the world is going to automatically change just because people start collaborating with each other over the internet. Will we amass a great deal of data? Yes. Will some of it be helpful to humankind in a way never before seen? Yes. But is it the second coming of the savior? I doubt it. People are good at collecting data, but not always good about using it….and that’s my point. And the more information we collect, the less obvious the right answers are.

Wikipedia is a great example of this notion. Although it provides a wealth of information and is just as accurate as any other source, it still contains the elements of imperfection. Yes we can collaborate on where to find gold, on what the facts of our past are, science, medicine, and many other positive ventures. However, there are many that use the technology to collaborate on child pornography, drugs, sex, and many other unmentionable ventures. Does that mean that we should stop mass collaboration? No. But what it does mean is that because some humans use these positive forms of communication in less than useful ways, the time we could be spending using the positive data for good has to be spent filtering out the negative. Thus, the advantages are not as positive as we might think.

Yes, Wikipedia provides a good place to seek information for anyone with the means to access it, but can we be assured the information is correct? The site employs five full-time people whose job it is to filter out the negative. Is mass collaboration that exciting when we have to filter out negatives?