![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
While doing grad school research, I was perversely pleased to find a particularly awful type on the ETS website linking to fee waivers.
I'm pleased to be reminded that even the elites are sometimes also screwups. :D
In other news, I was reminded this weekend of the Clay Shirky talk I saw about something called 'Cognitive Surplus.' It's titled, "Where Do People Find the Time?", basically about the amount of time spent doing whatever (transcript here).
( YouTube of Shirky's talk at the Web 2.0 Conference )
Though a lot of intelligent people may mock Wikipedia, in much the same way that others may mock people who play role-playing games, practice iaido, or make their own cheese (to say nothing of the people who do all three), the 'Encyclopedia Everyone Can Edit' is still a tool that people use more than they think they do. We all recognize that there are trivial parts of wikipedia (e.g. the Chewbacca page is longer than the Exploratorium page), but where do we get our information about, say where the hell in Eastern Europe/Western Asia is Georgia? What is the capital of Wisconsin? If you don't know, where do you look? Chances are, if you don't search Google first, you might instead search Wikipedia. For that matter, if you type 'Capital of Wisconsin' into Google, the page that Google ranks number two is the Wikipedia entry.
According to Shirky's estimate, one percent cognitive space used TV watching could produce ten thousand wikipedia projects or other, perhaps projects even more useful. Watching the vids (about 15 minutes total) really offers a better example of what I'm talking about. It's just another opportunity for me to claim that it's an amazing time to be alive.
I'm pleased to be reminded that even the elites are sometimes also screwups. :D
In other news, I was reminded this weekend of the Clay Shirky talk I saw about something called 'Cognitive Surplus.' It's titled, "Where Do People Find the Time?", basically about the amount of time spent doing whatever (transcript here).
( YouTube of Shirky's talk at the Web 2.0 Conference )
Though a lot of intelligent people may mock Wikipedia, in much the same way that others may mock people who play role-playing games, practice iaido, or make their own cheese (to say nothing of the people who do all three), the 'Encyclopedia Everyone Can Edit' is still a tool that people use more than they think they do. We all recognize that there are trivial parts of wikipedia (e.g. the Chewbacca page is longer than the Exploratorium page), but where do we get our information about, say where the hell in Eastern Europe/Western Asia is Georgia? What is the capital of Wisconsin? If you don't know, where do you look? Chances are, if you don't search Google first, you might instead search Wikipedia. For that matter, if you type 'Capital of Wisconsin' into Google, the page that Google ranks number two is the Wikipedia entry.
According to Shirky's estimate, one percent cognitive space used TV watching could produce ten thousand wikipedia projects or other, perhaps projects even more useful. Watching the vids (about 15 minutes total) really offers a better example of what I'm talking about. It's just another opportunity for me to claim that it's an amazing time to be alive.
searching for the mouse
There are 3 comments on this entry. (Reply.)