It’s nice to see that “Information wants to be free” is a consistent message in this class. It probably helps that there are more and more angles to this phrase that we learn as the semester goes on.
We were told to read over an article that deals with Wikipedia, a source that Professor O’Malley is surprisingly open to in comparison to most teacher that I have had. The article deals with the whole situation with Kavanaugh, mainly a bizarre claim that he made regarding a game called “Devil’s Triangle”. What’s interesting about this story is that Wikipedia took a stance against people who tried to edit the page on said game to mention Kavanaugh’s input. To quote the article, “We do not dignify such hoaxes with mention”.
This article is a good way to set up the discussion that we had during class today. Professor O’Malley opened up with a quick history lesson on the encyclopedia, mainly the founder of it, Denis Diderot, and how he managed to accumulate sources into one large pile that people could look to. He searched for experts and scholars to form articles that could be easily verified and researched by people for their own studies, and that would be the basis for other encyclopedias, such as the Encyclopedia Britannica, which would be quite popular in the 20th century.
Unfortunately, the internet quickly made Encyclopedia Britannica useless, mainly because our new age of internet means we can search for whatever we want, whenever we want. As we reached the subject of the internet, Professor O’Malley makes a claim that “The more information is shared, the more it innovates”. To continue on with this point, Professor O’Malley brings up Richard Stallman, an early computer expert and later computer hacker, who argued that “If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.” It’s an argument made for freeing the distribution of information.
Professor O’Malley builds up on this even more with the idea of Crowdsourcing. The idea is that if you have knowledge on a particular subject, you should be allowed to give your own thoughts and contributions on the knowledge of said subject. It sounds like Wikipedia, and in a way, it is, but Professor O’Malley gave examples of how this idea can get out of hand by using Wikipedia articles.
It through what he showed us that I developed my own thoughts on the matter. While I agree that information and such should be free to some extent, there are definitely outcomes of spreading information that is not the truth, or otherwise is more of a mouthpiece for certain ideologies. Professor O’Malley brought up the infamous “Pizza gate”, pointing out the spread of information lead to a dangerous man shooting up a pizza place, even though said information was completely ridiculous.
To me, I think that information should be looked over by experts. Sure, people can have their own opinions, but information should be verified by scholars and professors before some guy who merely looks over articles about a subject suddenly decides he wants to be a leading voice on it. Wikipedia doesn’t just let anyone edit their pages despite what some people tell you, and I think that should be the standard, especially in an age where information is easier to get than ever.