Fri Aug 04 04:13:00 UTC 2006

Wikipederastia

Posted at 04:13 AM by scoleman

Why is Wikipedia, as a concept, so contentious? People get so bellicose at the mere mention. When it comes to people like Jaron Lanier you’d almost think Wikipedia was– people getting together for the ritual abuse of underage children. Not to be a Wikipedia fanboy but his arguments seem so sophomoric. I won’t list them all here. If you haven’t listened, RU interviews him on the subject here at the MondoGlobo Network.

Anyway, it’s just curious to me. I listened to the following yesterday.

http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2006/08/20060802bmain.asp

Is this our society’s first confrontation with artificial intelligence? Or scirmish perhaps? Or maybe that should say artificial cognition? We tend to think of our eventual robot overlords as individuals. I wonder what their collective view of the Mel Gibson dustup would be? Would that view be at odds with our human, collective view? Would their view look a lot like the entry right now on Wikipedia?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Gibson

I digress. Jaron, do you deny the pre-Wikipedian existence of collective thought?

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