Scott Taylor's Position Paper
From Internet: Knowledge and Community
Interconnected, Interactive, and Interdependent
By: Scott Taylor
The triumph of the information age, the Internet has become a truly remarkable lens through which knowledge is procured, digested, and disseminated among people worldwide, making critical thinking skills more crucial than ever in order to objectively assess this wealth of knowledge which exists in cyberspace. Digitization has provided the ability to scan massive amounts of information; often times the answer to a question is just a click away. This could potentially suggest a descending level of esteem placed upon the importance of acquired knowledge. The idea is that it’s easy to take for granted that which is easily accessible and at one’s fingertips almost anytime, anywhere. In this way, knowledge can be construed as having instrumental value in that a desired end is reached, regardless of any perceivable intrinsic value. More often than not, however, an individual seeks to make connections and associations when obtaining knowledge, thus implying that context is at least as important as content.
“Cyberspace is the land of knowledge, and the exploration of that land can be a civilization’s truest, highest calling. The opportunity is now before us to empower every person to pursue that calling in his or her own way.” (Dyson et al.) In A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age, the Internet is discussed as an uncharted frontier; it suggests that it is to society’s great advantage to embrace the opportunities inherent in the digital age. With more people obtaining easier access to the Internet all the time a question arises: are we as a society becoming desensitized to how we perceive and receive knowledge? Conventional wisdom seems to imply that the more we know, the less we understand. Couldn’t it be argued, however, that the rules of the game are changing? If, as is illustrated in A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age, we are currently experiencing the onset of the so-called ‘Third Wave’, than we must redefine the paradigm. “As humankind explores this new ‘electronic frontier’ of knowledge, it must confront again the most profound questions of how to organize itself for the common good.” (Dyson et al.) Knowledge holds the potential to be simultaneously ephemeral, suiting our needs on the spot when convenient for us, and at the same time, it can conceivably last eternally, thanks to “…cyberspatial ‘warehouses’ of data, knowledge, information and misinformation in digital form, the ones and zeros of binary computer code.” (Dyson et al.) The key is to adapt to this new zeitgeist in a way that fosters the development of collective intelligence and promotes large-scale, social problem-solving.
There exists a sort of continuum upon which knowledge can be classified from personal to social. At least as far as the Internet is concerned, (or as far as the subject matter of the vast majority of wiki projects in this class have indicated) the scale tends to, more or less, tip towards the personal end. This is to say that personal interests are a strong motivator in engaging in Internet activity; people tend to want to find out about and contribute to things that they are interested in. This ultimately leads to it being a social activity, because even if one researches something for personal reasons, he/she winds up interacting with others by receiving knowledge from them and likewise possibly contributing knowledge. For example, my Wikipedia project on American musical group, The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson was purely spawned by my own interest, but it didn’t take long before I found the inspiration and opportunity to become active in the shaping of his Wikipedia site. One of the key factors in the success of such a site is the nonlinear fashion with which it is constructed. Anyone at anytime can alter it and the amazing thing is, after a while, it becomes pretty accurate. That is, proofreading takes place and errors are eliminated, eventually resulting in a (hopefully) balanced account of the subject matter.
This brings to mind Manuel Castells’ notion in “An Introduction to the Information Age” of ‘timeless time’, “…defined by the use of new information/communication technologies in a relentless effort to annihilate time, to compress years in seconds, seconds in split seconds…to eliminate sequencing of time…” (City, 2:7, 12). In the Web 2.0 world, it is possible to explore and construct knowledge in a piecemeal fashion which mimics the way the human mind makes associations. It is essential to comprehend Castells’ assertion that “…the network society, as the dominant social structure emerging in the Information Age, is organized around new forms of time and space…These are the dominant forms, and not the forms in which most people live, but through their domination, they affect everybody.” (12) He believes that the concept of timeless time is all around us; in fact, the digital reality is functional proof of this.
The ‘Network Society’ has transformed the way information and knowledge are transmitted and shared far beyond what anyone could have guessed even a few years ago, thanks in no small part to the interactive nature of the technology. Conventional power structures/hierarchies don’t exist there; there is no central point. Furthermore, Castells points out that it is not a product of information technology, but without such technology, the Network Society paradigm would not flourish as it has. Nevertheless, it’s served as the impetus for the blossoming of social networks, laying the groundwork for the sharing of knowledge in our information-saturated world. ‘Collective intelligence’ is the end goal: the combined, problem-solving effort of many works out to be greater than the sum of its individual parts.
Doug Schuler’s “Cultivating Society’s Civic Intelligence: Patterns for a New ‘World Brain’” reports that “By transcending the individual, civic intelligence adds another level to the idea of ‘intelligence.’ Civic intelligence is a form of collective intelligence…this type of intelligence, probably to a much higher degree than an individual’s intelligence, can be improved and made more effective. And how people create, share, and act upon information is crucial to that.” (Schuler) The way in which we perceive and share knowledge is leaning increasingly in this direction; this kind of model simply does not lend itself to the old fashioned top down mentality. Knowledge should be more than just intrinsic; it should be of practical use and if it is known to only one person then is it really knowledge, or merely information? I’d say it is indeed still knowledge, but does it really matter if it cannot be shared or debated?
The point is this sort of “instrumental” knowledge holds more profound implications for humankind than we can possibly imagine. To be clear, it is not about everyone thinking and behaving alike; in fact, it’s more about cooperation and respecting one another’s thoughts, with the aim of reaching a logical, reasonable consensus that really drives this concept. Provided that a Network Society does not lose sight of its uniqueness and flexibility, the potential for the flowering of knowledge therein is always extant. “Probably the most important pattern to keep in mind is consciousness of the network itself. This means to a participating individual or organization that they need to be an active, respectful, and intelligent member of the network. They also must know that the network is in some sense alive; it must be sustained as well as used.” (Schuler) Thus, if no one contributes and no one listens to what anyone else has to say knowledge is really just static information.
So is there a great advantage in having all of this potential knowledge at our proverbial fingertips? Certainly the prospect of collective intelligence should be an encouraging, even exciting thing to humanity; a catalyst to steadily raise the bar, sociologically speaking. Some might argue that decentralization as a result of a Network Society could wind up in chaos. I assert that quite the opposite will prove to be the case. The current technological climate is one of transition; however, we’re already witnessing its promise coming to fruition as knowledge becomes more freely and widely available than ever before. With any luck, the future will play host to a cornucopia of opinions and viewpoints that challenge one another and ultimately coalesce in the interest of expanding humankind’s knowledge as a whole. It’s never enough to simply know of something. To truly understand it, connections are crucial, for what good can come of knowing anything if there’s no way of knowing why it’s worth knowing? This applies to how the Internet informs our understanding of knowledge…maybe it even applies to our understanding of each other, too.
Works Cited
Castells, Manuel. “An Introduction to the Information Age.” City, 2:7, 6-16. Print.
Dyson et al. “A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age.” Release 1.2. 1994.
Schuler, Doug. “Cultivating Society’s Civic Intelligence: Patterns for a New “World Brain.” Information and Communication & Society, 4:2 (2001): 157-181. Print.
