via Open Culture by Dan Colman on 1/18/11
Wikipedia just turned 10 this weekend. And, to mark the occasion, The
Atlantic asked ten “All-Star Thinkers” respond to a simple question:
“What do you think about Wikipedia?” The responses? Well, they express
the usual range of opinions, from appreciation to something
approaching disdain. Take for example the two excerpts below:
Yochai Benkler, professor, Harvard Law School: That’s the biggest gift
that Wikipedia has given to us — a vision of practical utopia. What
gift can we best give back? Perhaps it is just this, to recognize the
transformative role that thousands of individuals have played for all
of us in how we can imagine our lives together as productive, engaged,
social beings.
Jonathan Lethem, novelist, Pomona professor: With all respect to the
noble volunteer army, I call it death by pedantry. Question: hadn’t we
more or less come to understand that no piece of extended description
of reality is free of agendas or ideologies? This lie, which any
Encyclopedia implicitly tells, is cubed by the infinite regress of
Wikipedia tinkering-unto-mediocrity.
Other contributors include Clay Shirky, NYU journalism prof Jay Rosen,
and Mariette DiChristina (editor-in-chief, Scientific American).
Big Thinkers on Wikipedia’s 10th Anniversary is a post from: Open Culture.
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