Knol-edge

by Peter Saint-Andre

2007-12-17

Both Stowe Boyd and Tim Bray posted the other day about Google's new Knol service and its threat to Wikipedia. Both express concerns with Wikipedia that I've had for some time: the centralization, collectivization, and bureaucratization of knowledge. Furthermore, as Jim Bennett pointed out a few years ago, the oft-drawn comparison between Linux and Wikipedia is not right, because Linux contains built-in correctives (the code must compile) and incentives (number of downloads etc.), whereas Wikipedia has neither of those things. I don't especially mean to dump on Wikipedia because I think it was a cool idea, but I find myself far more comfortable with a decentralized, individualized, libertarian model of knowledge, in which people on the edges post what they know to their own websites and order emerges from the links that other folks naturally make to those sites. In other words, the Internet. :)


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