Comments on: OII SDP 2007 (XXXI): Wikipedia & Peer Production

By: Ismael Peña-López

Ismael Peña-López — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 04:24:11 +0000

I think you hit the point when you talk about social software appropriation by digital natives. This has been one of my recursive thoughts here at Harvard and I’ve tried to summarize it somehow on my last post about Web Science.

We have to keep talking about this!!

By: Enric

Enric — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 02:30:26 +0000

Ok, let then stress the question on the tool aspect (& excuse the simplification): since that type of crowd collaboration has been only possible with tools like wikis, completely OS generated, their appropriation has been faster in hands of techie and hacker-minded people, those guys/girls still far from have an important “official” weight in Academia (and a majority of companies).

The answer should be around the life cycle of some tools, and its distance from many departments guided by digital immigrant’s grandfathers (with all my respects).

By: Ismael Peña-López

Ismael Peña-López — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 01:45:19 +0000

I agree, but this explains only we the non-experts came up with Wikipedia. But the stress of Zittrain’s question was not on why Wikipedia had its origins in the “wise crowds” but WHY NOT had it had its origins in Aacademia.

I know it is more or less the same thing, but the focus is not on the success of those crowds, but on the “failure” of Academia not to envision those changes taking place in the society and the new technologies empowering them.

By: Enric

Enric — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 01:22:15 +0000

Maybe Academia didn’t came up with Wikipedia because the core of the matter is that knowledge peer-production model could now be based on tools like wikis, that rewrite somehow the rules of who’s the expert and why (like in Open Source development, every participant has the chance of winning that position -degrees apart- strictly by the amount or quality of what they write/do/help for a certain project).