Citizendium Blog

The Institute of European Affairs, a prestigious Dublin, Ireland thinktank, invited me to kick off their “Our Digital Futures” program.  So I came and said a few more things about the politics of knowledge.  Here’s their summary of the talk:

Larry Sanger began by asking why governments have not regulated internet content more. The new “cyberpolitys”, communities on the internet, are generally assumed to be able to self regulate. Yet, looking far into the future, he posited the view that if Citizendium, his latest project, were to become an authoritative encyclopaedia for mankind, its internal governance would be of utmost importance. The more successful collaborative projects such as Wikipedia become, the more likely it is that an external authority will attempt to regulate their content. To avoid government intervention, the authoritative projects of the future must self govern to some extent. The best protection against undue government interference in open collaborative projects is internal governance. The Republican State may provide the best model through which future cyberpolitys can self govern. 

I had a number of comments about recent events.  I was delighted that Ireland’s Minister for Communication, Eamon Ryan, was on hand, among others, and had some kind things to say.

While there I also received a copy of IEA Senior Researcher Johnny Ryan’s new book, Countering Militant Islamist Radicalisation on the Internet: A User Driven Strategy to Recover the Web.  I might write more about that later — but who’da thunk Internet communities might be terrorism-fighting tools?  That’s what he suggests, and he makes a pretty compelling case for the thesis, from what I can tell.

You can listen here.