WORSE THAN BAD

W. G. (Winfred Georg Maximilian) Sebald (May 18, 1944, Wertach im Allgäu–December 14, 2001, Norfolk, United Kingdom) was a writer and academic. Towards the end of his life he was being cited by many literary critics as one of the greatest living authors, and was tipped as a possible future winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. He preferred to be called 'Max', from one of his middle names, by family and friends.
-- Introduction to the entry about W.G. Sebald, on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is the open source encyclopedia that Nick Carr, the hybrid Harvard technologist and critic, so witheringly skewers in his October 2005 piece Amorality of Web 2.0. To Carr, Wikipedia, with its veneration of the noble amateur, encapsulates the great seduction of the Web 2.0 movement.

Carr is, of course, right. But he didn’t go far enough. He describes the entries as “worse than bad”, but doesn’t explain what this  actually means. He fails to take his own argument to its logical conclusion. So let me (I can’t resist) drive that hybrid Carr an extra mile.

Wikipedia is supposed to represent the ideal of “collective intelligence” which is being peddled by utopians like James The Wisdom of Crowds Surowiecki. But the truth about Wikipedia, the unintended consequences of its radical democratization of knowledge, is that it turns everyone into kids. The open source encylopedia infantilizes knowledge. On Wikipedia, we all become children, playing at being adult, slipping into an Alice in Wonderland version of reality. If you’re Alice, it might be fun. But for the grown-ups, it is worse than bad.

As all serious students of mobs understood – from Elias Canetti to Gustave Le Bon to Hannah Arendt -- the crowd is banal. Lost in the crowd, we lose our individuality, our thoughtfulness, our ability to reason. As members of a crowd, we revert to childhood.

And this is what has happened to the intellectual quality of open source entries at Wikipedia.Take the introductory remarks (see above) on W.G. Sebald, the Anglo-German essayist, historian and travel writer.  It’s not so much a question of inaccuracy or bias, but rather the utter childishness of the entry. Here is one of the more seductive literary voices of the late twentieth century and all the kindergarden-level commentary in Wikipedia can tell us is that Sebald is one of the “greatest living authors” who is a “possible” winner of the Nobel Prize. And then, to cap it all, we are told that Sebald preferred to be called Max by family and friends.

All that is missing from this encyclopedic inanity is Sebald’s favorite food, his favorite sports team and his favorite animal.

This Wikipedia entry on W.G. Sebald is the work of a five year old. In Nick Carr words, it is worse than bad.

Comments

[Michael Carroll]

(In fake Parisian accent)

So what your saying is that this technology obliterates the bourgeois category, "The Classic"

(in regular American)

...and the problem with that is...

[Justin]

That was one of the best pieces I've read in the Weekly Standard. My hat is off... you'll be in my bookmarks.

[Danny Motion]

I think he's saying that technology obliterates the category "intelligence". Even Americans have been known to be intelligent

[Michael Carroll]

Odd that the first comment refers to the third. Seems like fishy blog management.

[Michael Carroll]

Oh I see. The comments post last to first, how confusing.

[dannymotion]

fish blog management

isn't that undemocratic? (very French)

[Michael Carroll]

Though as Walter Benjamin said the Angel of History flies backwards distraught at the wake of its own destruction (or something like that).

[Michael Carroll]

I hope the level of entertainment I am deriving from this comment thing doesn't get me banned for life in any case. I actually did have something thoughtful to say before I was reduced to childlike fascination here.

[Danny Motion]

but Walter Benjamin was German, not French (another fish kettle)

[Michael Carroll]

(WB German in Paris so he MUST of developed a great fake Parisan accent)

Anyway,

Here is my thought. The arguement made here is not different in my view from the idea that people should have limited access to bibles or pens or violins because they might loose their appreciation for religion or literature or string music.

This is of course wrong. But it is true that religion literature and music will never be the same. We didn't loose the classical tradition because we gained "fiddlers" Talented people will still find an audience and talentless people will gain a better appreciation of thier craft. At the same time people who were denied the benefit of expression solely because of lack of access might have an opportunity now. Where is the problem? This is just better access to the FREE MARKET of ideas. And afterall, communication theory establishes that with frictionless networks if something is any good you will find out about it (probably more than you care to).

Don't some of you people call yourselves Conservatives? I'm just asking.

[AP]

Given your denunciation of technology and the opportunities it gives people to be heard in the Weekly Standard, I hope that you can climb a few rungs up the intellectual honesty ladder to the point where you can take on representative democracy itself, because that is the the true source of your concerns. Please, do us a favor and stop quibbling. Go for the jugular. Call for the return of monarchy and the heyday of Christian Europe that produced not just Bach, Mozart, and Shakespeare, but also wars upon wars and persecutions and massacres and laws of every quibbling sort and nature, to the point where our ancestors preferred to cross a huge ocean and rough it out on an unknown continent than to endure this perfection of a society.

Oh, and when you do, try to remember that it is extremely problematic to talk about Socrates and his Republic, after all, Plato wrote it, and Socrates is merely a character. This approach allows Plato to explore the "best" Republic, but also to afford these ideas the irony they deserve. Because the imaginary Republic also got rid of parents, having each child raised communally. I imagine that you are crazy about that idea too, writing in the Weekly Standard and all.

[Greg]

Bono is no elite talent :P

And further if Kafka describes the technocratic-induced amnesia a century ago, yet you can still identify "cultural elites" after that, your argument is...what is the term...'empirically denied'

[George]

This is all a fascist argument, not much different from early 20th century elitist conservative europeans like Mussolini's poodle Pareto. Resisting this sort of elitism is what is great about America. I seriously think this sort of reactionary nonsense should be banned

[Paul Freedman]

I think young people as a whole tend to be infatuated with over-ideological simplifications of that big grey quandry called reality. In other words, as a whole, they're stupid. So obviously any media based on aggregating the combined stupidity of these dolts will itself be stupid. Why is this news?

[suspicious]

I agree. But this Web 2.0 thing is a major challenge to the conservative movement. They really are a load of old hippies out in California. Jobs in particular. He's a threat in so many ways. I don't trust his iPod thing either

[Roger Snowden]

Well, when one group of elites are made to disappear, it is usually by another group of elites. Steve Jobs was so elitist, he actually thought IBM was his corporate enemy, and failed to notice Microsoft eating his market. Such is the fate of the true believer.

Technology is not the problem, rather it is our difficulty in adapting to it. We end up conforming to technology, when we want it to conform to us. I become my tool. I become my blog.

Yet, my tiny blog, democratically created and properly anti-elitist, only has about 10 regular viewers. And that includes my mom.

When we all have a voice, and choose to speak at once, none has a voice.

When we are kids, we scribble pictures and our parents "ooh" and "ah", but nobody else pays attention. Then we grow up and most of us put the crayons away and pursue more serious and appropriate endeavours. Some of us have talent, and actually become artists, and a few of those artists actually succeed. Truly good artists are rare, of course.

When we all get our digital crayons and are "liberated", and "self-realized", we collectively scribble. That does not create more art, just more scribbling. Those few with talent have to color above the din to get noticed. Truly good artists will remain rare.

Our markets will adapt, and we will find ways to filter the crap. In the end, nothing really changes. We will find new elites to point the way.

I love technology, and I love freedom. But, technology won't set me free. Only I can do that.

[jeff tidwell]

I share Mr. Carroll's sentiments regarding your article, as well as his fancy at responding to a blog post. This sort of argument really has gone on for centuries, and society manages to find a way to carry on. While my favorite movie is The Incredibles (if everybody is super, then no one will be), I certainly don't share the apocolyptic view that you propse. The wheat always manages to separate from the chaff, and an open source Web should not differ much. Most people really are nincompoops, yet this is true relative to the moment. I am old enough to have lived before personal computers, cell phones, etc., etc., etc. However I believe that I am a much smarter nincompoop than before, because I can see the import of the changes taking place. Sadly we are in the minority.

[jeff tidwell]

Another thing that I see that concerns me, which I do see is a result of a culture of instant gratification, is that so few people see the inertia of history. there is no introspection or reflection, just reaction and opinion. I see that as a much greater threat than an open source Web, although such an environment certainly might exascerbate this problem.

[trotsky]

Mr. Keen,

Provactive thoughts in the Standard article, but the effect of the last graph followed by teh bio-squib is too much:

" ... All we have is the great seduction of citizen media, democratized content and authentic online communities. And weblogs, course. Millions and millions of blogs.

Andrew Keen is a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur and digital media critic. He blogs at TheGreatSeduction.com ..."

[Gregg Harris]

I appreciate the concerns you express in your article inthe Standard, however as an old preacher once said, "The is a ditch on both sides of the road." If we try too hard to avoid one ditch, we tend to swerve into the ditch on the other side. My fear is that in trying to preserve the "elite artist" with an "elite media" we may protect the mediocre pretenders and fail to see the value latent in "ordinary man" in his authentic artistic endeavor, (whether folk or fine art). For example, I sometimes think the worst thing that ever happened to music was our ability to record it. It use to be that every family and village made its own music on the front porch or in the church or synagogue, but now we are far more likely to merely consume music made by others rather than create our own. We are becoming a herd of consumers instead of a nation of producers. But I believe that as long as there remains a spectrum from the inept amature to excellent professional we will always have an audience to appreciate what is excellent. What is more, when a great number of the audience are themselves aspiring producers of any art, their appreciation of the excellent art will be a more informed, as opposed to an uninformed, opinion. Talent and creative genius will always win out. So, let the competition continue among the "millions and millions of blogs" and may the best man (or woman) win.

[Riley McArdle]

So you think Wikipedia is "worse than bad". In the time it took you to complain about it, you could've just gone and made it just a little better.

If you know about W.G. Sebald, then improve his entry. That's the whole point of Wikipedia and collaboration. If you see something childish, incorrect, misleading or poorly worded, you can just fix it yourself. You don't have to contact the author, explain the problem and hope they'll update it.

No one is saying that Wikipedia in it's current form is the end all and be all of encyclopedias. It's a work in progress and always will be.

[TM Lutas]

It is possible to compare Wikipedia to Britannica and several efforts have been done. Here's a typical one (http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=675). Britannica, unsurprisingly typically has less variance in the quality of its articles but Wikipedia articles tend to be longer, have more information and often are more accurate than Britannica.

Wikipedia is hardly "worse than bad". It's a young effort that is just starting to hit its stride and is likely to outpace traditional encyclopedias within the decade.

[Tony]

"So you think Wikipedia is "worse than bad". In the time it took you to complain about it, you could've just gone and made it just a little better." I get a head ache every time I hear that one. Wikipedia has plenty of contributers, and over a long period of time, still isn't good. Therefore, we can say, more contributers certainly didn't make wikipedia "better". Us people who work or study 8+ hours a day don't want to come home to free services ran by a horde of group think children.

[VDOVault]

Well of course Wikipedia is worse than bad, or in particular that example entry.

The real question is where is the freely accessible reliable online source of information about everything to replace it?

Also have you ever considered that in America we really don't value education intelligence and literacy? I know much ink and airtime is devoted to our leaders who say we do, but that is really just so much spin.

If we did value these three qualities, why wouldn't our textbooks be more challenging, why would so many children spend hours either home alone or with ill paid and largely indifferent caregivers in front of the television and why wouldn't parents be allowed more time to see to their children's educational needs by their employers and the business world at large.

Or is it that what is really valued in America is money, power and success -- all things for which education, literacy and intelligence are not prerequisites?

Perhaps you should put in a Wikipedia entry on those two points?

The Vault