Having started school again, the chore of writing term papers have followed. I have one huge gripe that I want to make. In these papers, one is cripplingly limited to using sources from academia. Online sources, such as blogs and Wikipedia articles, are explicitly forbidden.
I am aware of the argument that the web is an open bulletin board that anyone can publish on, and that information maybe at times, unreliable. However, I feel that institutions are living in the past and removed from the modern developments of the information age, refusing to acknowledge the changes that have been taking place. Knowledge and ideas are no longer distributed in the form of a pyramid, with the institutions at the top, and the people at the bottom, but rather, the pyramid has been flatted down to a plateau, where everyone, and anyone, can make an equally useful contribution. Ideas originate less from national research labs and more from the entrepreneur spirit of individuals in their basements, with the web acting as a platform for the exchange of these ideas. In 2006, Time magazine recognized this paradigm shift, acknowledging the contributions of the masses by naming the person of the year, “You”. Refusing to accept the open web as a source is tantamount to alienating a large source of information.
It is precisely the openness of the web itself that makes it such a valuable source. Ideas are published without being held back by funding, and are exposed to an even larger “peer review” process. If you ventured a look at the one of the ‘talk’ pages for a particular Wikipedia article, you’ll realize that there is a lot of meaningful discussion that goes on behind it.
There is nothing that makes Wikipedia less reliable than Encyclopedia Britannica, for example. On the contrary, Encyclopedia Britannica positions itself as an authoritative source on a subject, a bible of information which one has to accept as being ‘true’, when often, there’s room for debate.
As for the matter that only sources from academic papers are considered reliable and accepted, I have this to say. The very idea that knowledge has to come from a certain source, accessible through expensive publications and where opinions are limited only to an exclusive group of people, is repressive.
Then again, quoting Upton Sinclair, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
D., when’s your autumn holiday? : )
i’ll fly you to some of our factories and offices in china and philippines.
you’ll love it, i think.
Knowledge and ideas are no longer distributed in the form of a pyramid, with the institutions at the top, and the people at the bottom, but rather, the pyramid has been flatted down to a plateau, where everyone, and anyone, can make an equally useful contribution. Ideas originate less from national research labs and more from the entrepreneur spirit of individuals in their basements, with the web acting as a platform for the exchange of these ideas. In 2006, Time magazine recognized this paradigm shift, acknowledging the contributions of the masses by naming the person of the year, “You”. Refusing to accept the open web as a source is tantamount to alienating a large source of information.
excellent.
must add- i’ve never heard of a person named upton sinclair until today, neither his quote, yet in my personal life it’s something i’ve -at several points- tried to explain
take fx (forex) e.g. ‘currency trading’
me in third person to someone else — these graphs you see on tv, these people looking all puzzled. dressed like scientists. 3/4 of the graphs come pre-generated by computer algorythms. 1/2 of what they tell you is a summary of on-screen variables. take the standard news headline- ‘ drops 10%! (everyone, panic!)’ the biggest farce ever. if you’re an fx trader yourself, you’ll know that currency prices rise and fall by the microsecond. during the time it takes a reporter to finish her sentence ‘today, took a rise|fall against the !’ –> the price may have already adjusted six, seven times. essentially making such a headline a ‘permanent inventory’ of news -or let’s say it- information.
is this the establishment we’re made to believe? constitutional blind trust despite otherwise open research?
the answer – (and now i can finally call up a cool quote! thanks, D.!)
Then again, quoting Upton Sinclair, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.bless you.
Thanks for your comments, S. I look forward to that, although an enjoyable holiday period is still quite remote at this point, about more than half a year away, since I still have to finish up my military service (about 3 weeks worth) during the upcoming one.
Speaking of military service, that quote was extremely true in the context of a military organization. Every ridiculous idea gets passed down just because nobody in the chain of command wants to recognize that said idea wasn’t sound, and prefer to substitute lack of understanding with logic that’s akin to “The Fuhrer knows what he’s doing”.
i can draw that out to labour as well, to continue further ; )
i usually explain my employer-employee relation in this way to forein visitors, unfamiliar with asia:
‘in china, employees are not hired by companies to think. in china, your boss thinks for you. they just execute.’
god damn. we need to talk over some beers|coffee : ) this is cool
That sentence brings to mind a lot of Soviet/Tsar-era jokes. This one especially comes to mind. Just need to insert a layer that says “we think for you”.
Come to think of it, you almost have one of those Russian reversal jokes.
“In the free world, you think of ideas for a party. In Red China, the party thinks for you!”