Citizendium Blog

One thing Andrew Keen said near the end of that video gave me pause.  He said something similar in his book, and it is something I have been thinking about, idly, for years.  It is that the Internet is making us more selfish, or more self-centered.  I have thought for a long time that we don’t talk together face-to-face so much anymore — or, I am honest enough to admit that I don’t.  I don’t see my friends as much.  Partly I’m sure that’s because I’ve gotten busier, and now we have a baby.  But I think we are becoming more self-centered as a society.  While I am an individualist in many ways, I also believe we are social and political animals, and as another gentleman said in the video, we are not fully human if we are cut off from others.

And I have to say that my talking to you on this blog does not count as full-blooded social relations!  Should I be telling this to a friend?  Well, I can speak to more people this way, and have a bigger impact.  But in doing so am I ignoring a subtle negative impact that the medium has on me?

Our lives would be very sad and weak indeed if all of our social relations were mediated by the Internet.  I think perhaps we are already seeing what this might look like among young people, whose social lives are mediated by FaceBook (or the social networking website du jour) and texting, who complain that there isn’t dating any longer, who more often “hook up” rather than develop serious relationships.

In our radical new digital world, who or what will teach us again how to spend and enjoy time together face to face –especially those of us who do not go to church, or are not in school, and otherwise have few opportunities for truly meaningful social interaction?

I have absolutely loved the PBS Jane Austen series.  (Anybody agree?  I’m so disappointed that it’s over.  That Pride and Prejudice miniseries, from the 1990s, is absolutely magnificent.)  While I have little romantic nostalgia for early 19th century manners and society — well, it would be nice if some of that politeness were back in style – I was struck by how people would pass the time, hours of it, in conversation with friends and family.  That is charming.  I suspect that serious face-to-face conversation makes us better and more human.  It seems to me that we are now much more perfunctory in our communication.

Of course, there is an old complaint that television is ruining the arts of conversation and friendship.  But the participatory Internet makes the problem worse, because it gives us an outlet for social relations, but it is by its nature a self-centered and self-directed outlet, and it is not fully embodied.  This is a problem.

Now, I love self-determination and self-actualization as much as anyone.  I come from nonconformist Protestant stock, but I’m a free-thinking philosopher; I’m also a Reedie, an Alaskan, and an American.  I remember my old 11th grade chemistry teacher telling me the platitude, “Be true to yourself for you are your own best friend.”  I was already taking that seriously.  This is why it is easy for me to work online for small, risky companies, buck prevailing Internet trends, not use my Ph.D. in philosophy to get an academic job, leave trendy Silicon Valley for a small Ohio town, etc.  I am so far off the beaten track, I don’t even know where the track is anymore.  I say all that to establish my credentials as a nonconformist and iconoclast.  My life has been extremely self-directed, and perhaps that is why I am drawn to the Internet: you can do what you want, when you want.  Freedom and independence are prized online.

I don’t pretend to be terribly unusual in my independence.  There are many other people, especially online, who are equally independent, in all sorts of ways.  They too are very self-directed.  The problem for us is that in being so self-directed, when we converse online, we choose the topics we’re interested in, we choose who to listen to, we often choose who hears us — and this all happens without the many benefits of being there in real time, situated and embodied with other people.

Can we still have friendships, real friendships, if we spend so much of our free time this way?

Especially those of us who work online (and increasingly, I suspect, all of us will, one way or another), and who want to keep conversation and face-to-face, full-bodied friendship alive, will have to choose to maintain friendships offline.

Perhaps we should start 21st century salons, offline, where many different people come together, physically, to talk, with our mouths, where we do not all necessarily agree, but where we practice the virtues of civility that make it possible for people who disagree to remain friends.

Some Dutch filmmakers made a documentary (48 minutes), in English, titled “The Truth according to Wikipedia.”  It’s pretty good, but I’m too close to the story to be able to offer anything like an objective opinion.  It’s pretty heavy on Andrew Keen and his over-the-top yet strangely entertaining criticism of the Internet.  I’m in there, talking about Wikipedia; no mention of CZ, unfortunately, but you can’t ask for everything.

In an Inside Higher Ed column, “Professors Should Embrace Wikipedia,” Mark A. Wilson claims of Wikipedia, “The vision of its founders, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, has become reality…”  Wilson calls on college professors to get involved in Wikipedia, using their own real names.  One has to wonder if this is an April Fool’s gag, but it’s a pretty sober-sounding piece.

Here’s is my response, which I added to the IHE comments:

I’m Larry Sanger, and this is false. Please do not use my name to encourage professors to get involved in Wikipedia. My vision has always been for a maximally reliable information resource—not one that is controlled by faceless, often hostile, often irresponsible people, many of them teenagers and college students.

Over the years there have been repeated calls to professors to get involved and improve Wikipedia. Few have heeded the call, and those who have have come back pretty consistently saying, “This place is nuts.” Indeed, long ago—in 2002—I seriously considered starting up a Wikipedia “Sifter” project (you can still read about this in archives) in which experts would approve Wikipedia articles. At the time I was told by some of the more active Wikipedians, essentially: “Don’t expect those alleged experts to get any special treatment from us. They’re no better than the rest of us, and they shouldn’t get all uppity and act like they are!” It then became clear to me that Wikipedia simply had no place for experts. I could not in good conscience recommend that any serious knowledge professional participate in Wikipedia. I still cannot.

Inside Higher Ed and this columnist would do better to acquaint themselves with a project that actually gives college professors, and other experts, a modest but real stake in guidance of content decisions and management of content policy: the Citizendium. I can’t fault the author for not mentioning us, as we are new and, with only 5,800 articles, still unproven. But a positive passing mention would help to create a better alternative to Wikipedia. Please spread the word.

Sign up here. It’s a good time to sign up; tomorrow is our monthly Write-a-Thon, which is always very lively!

Let me temper the above comments with a few additional remarks:

• I have long maintained, and I still do, that Wikipedia is very useful, and that most of the people working on Wikipedia are excellent hands.  I do not mean to dismiss Wikipedia, or the work of most Wikipedians, wholesale.  I simply want to quash any notion that I can be associated with a call to experts to descend on Wikipedia, which I think is a bad idea.
• Perhaps I should also clarify that the significant advantage of the Citizendium is not merely that it makes a place for experts.  That is only one of our differences (and advantages).  But it is the difference that is relevant to any suggestion that experts get involved in Wikipedia.
• I understand that there are certain topics, especially more technical and mathematical topics, where Wikipedians behave themselves rather better and where expert knowledge is accorded an appropriate (not fawning, of course) respect.  I don’t mean to deny this, and well done to all involved for their success with articles on such topics.