Wikepedia R Us

Yes, I did say I was going to take the weekend off from blogging, but then, well, today is my first day of leave (and my first academic leave in thirteen years) and I needed some anchor as I look ahead to a very busy year with many projects but also a different schedule of time than one I am used to. I was an administrator for eight years, for pete's sake. I didn't exactly punch a clock but, if I did, it would have said I worked about sixty or seventy hours a week at my job and then was up much of the night writing on my own projects. So, I'm in for some seachanges this year and can't wait. But one thing that won't change is my frequent (I won't promise daily) blogs on various interfaces of technology and contemporary culture. To my astonishment, about 150-250 people a day (depending on the day) read this blog . . . not bots, but unique people who actually click and stay a while. It's a different form of writing, teaching, communicating. And THAT I am not leaving . . .

I will write other blog entries about leaves and leaving and leavetaking (I'll figure out a way to tie that to media). Today I want to praise an article on Wikipedia in the NY Times Magazine by novelist Jonathan Dee, "All the News That's Fit to Print Out" (July 1, 2007). It is a charmer. Smart but it also gives me something warm and fuzzy in the midst of this devastatingly depressing week where those who are the most powerful in this country seem determined to exercise their power in the most undemocratic and demoralizing ways.

And then there's Wikipedia. As Dee notes, it is the easiest thing in the world to take potshots at it but, hey, it is an amazing collaborative effort that values such traditional elements as the clarity of the written word, accuracy, and neutrality. In an era of the terrible character-assassination and idiotic jab-taking that passes for television "journalism" on the likes of Fox News, I'll take Wikipedia's collective stance on behalf of a well-rounded and diverse perspective. And that it is so largely a venture of the young gives me more hope than I feel just about anywhere else in our culture right now.

Here's the URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/magazine/01WIKIPEDIA-t.html?pagewanted...

And here's the ending:"Wikipedia may not exactly be a font of truth, but it does go against the current of what has happened to the notion of truth. The easy global dissemination of, well, everything has generated a D.I.Y. culture of proud subjectivity, a culture that has spread even to relatively traditional forms like television — as in the ascent of advocates like Lou Dobbs or Bill O’Reilly, whose appeal lies precisely in their subjectivity even as they name-check “neutrality” to cover all sorts of journalistic sins. But the Wikipedians, most of them born in the information age, have tasked themselves with weeding that subjectivity not just out of one another’s discourse but also out of their own. They may not be able to do any actual reporting from their bedrooms or dorm rooms or hotel rooms, but they can police bias, and they do it with a passion that’s no less impressive for its occasional excess of piety. Who taught them this? It’s a mystery; but they are teaching it to one another."----Jonathan Dee

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[And to conclude with an image; here is one from Flickr issued under a Creative Commons license, by Russell J Smith, of the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts. It felt very Web 2.0 to me in all kinds of ways so I repurpose it here, with thanks to the photographer.]