Borderland

Jaron Lanier’s essay published on Edge last week seemed to be prompted by his dissatisfaction with the Wikipedia biography about him which identified him as a film director, a statement that he claimed was inaccurate. His efforts to edit the page were repeatedly overruled by the other authors, and he concluded that “people with the most determination and time on their hands” are those whose voices prevail regardless of factual contradictions. He generalized his dissatisfaction with this personal experience to include “meta-aggregator sites” that “remove the scent of people” from content. Lanier concluded that ‘meta‘ websites deny readers valuable contextual information necessary for a coherent reading. He referred to Wikipedia as an “anonymous, faux-authoritative, anti-contextual brew.” Lanier wasn’t content to limit his critique to the internet. He broadened his complaint to include trends he sees running throughout society.

What we are witnessing today is the alarming rise of the fallacy of the infallible collective. Numerous elite organizations have been swept off their feet by the idea. They are inspired by the rise of the Wikipedia, by the wealth of Google, and by the rush of entrepreneurs to be the most Meta. Government agencies, top corporate planning departments, and major universities have all gotten the bug.

A response to Lanier from various individuals, organized by Clay Shirky, appeared yesterday. Lanier’s essay, and the collective responses of Shirky, Douglas Rushkoff, Quentin Hardy, Yochai Benkler, Clay Shirky, Cory Doctorow, Kevin Kelly, Esther Dyson, Larry Sanger, Fernanda Viegas & Martin Wattenberg, Jimmy Wales, George Dyson, Dan Gillmor, and Howard Rheingold, make for an entertaining and informative commentary on Wikipedia, and the cultural changes that networked media are having on our society in general.

For me, this exchange of ideas highlights the value of transactional and reader response theories and suggests an answer to Dan Visel’s observation on if:Book that we are still Learning to Read Wikipedia. Ben Vershbow commented on the issue also.

I was interested in Larry Sanger’s commentary about what he called epistemic collectivism. Sanger addressed a paradox he recognized in his own support for strong collaboration and his rejection of the ideological conformity that springs from consensus-building activity. Sanger resolved his dilemma by challenging the focus of the consensus-builders, saying that it isn’t the results of the process that are important but the process itself. “What’s great about Wikipedia,” according to Sanger, “is the fact that it is a way to organize enormous amounts of labor for a single intellectual purpose.” I don’t believe it is necessary to discount the value of the content on Wikipedia to appreciate it as a resource. Wikipedia is more than an experiment in collective intellectual activity. Kevin Kelly argued that “…the dumb thing is smarter than we think.”

Louise Rosenblatt’s, The Transactional Theory of Reading and Writing, provides an important insight into the value of interpretive communities to regulate the construction of meaning. According to Rosenblatt, “The “meaning” does not reside ready-made “in” the text or “in” the reader but happens or comes into being during the transaction between reader and text.” When we view meaning-making in this way we have to resolve a problem about where authority lies for determining the correctness or appropriateness of particular constructions of meaning. If authority rests with the author, then there is only one correct or legitimate meaning. If authority rests with the reader, then there is no correct meaning – all meanings are equally correct. Both of these positions are problematic in that they deny everyday notions of sense-making.

Rosenblatt saw “interpretive communities” as social and cultural regulating forces that limit the various potential meanings that can come from transactions between texts and readers. She argued that our ability to make tacit validity criteria explicit gives us a basis for both agreement and disagreement, and creates the possibility of change in interpretation, or the acceptance of alternative sets of criteria. Self-awareness on the part of readers and writers in Wikipedia enables communication across social and cultural differences. The work of the interpretive community is visible on the talk pages for any article. Readers of Wikipedia would be well-served to critically read the discussion pages because that’s where the validity criteria for article content is negotiated.

I don’t disagree with Lanier’s more general point about the danger of empowering collective consensus-building structures. Where Lanier went astray was in his inclusion of Wikipedia in his list of offenders. His misreading of Wikipedia assumed that the same power structure that governs top-down managed organizations is at work there also. The power and transparency of Wikipedia is visible in the talk pages and version history for each article. It is the interpretive community made manifest. The further beauty of the Wikipedia experiment in collective authorship is that anyone can participate. It’s unfortunate that it took a full-blown protest to resolve Lanier’s initial complaint. The breakdown of the editorial process is a matter of speculation. As it turns out, however, the interpretive community has made adjustments. If you look at the Jaron Lanier discussion page now, you can see that the error has been corrected, and you can see how the process was negotiated.

Maybe it’s irony, or just a mean joke that the bottom of his Digital Maoism essay contains the offending editorial comment, “Jaron Lanier is a film director.”