BigShinyThing

Back in the day, Jaron Lanier invented Virtual Reality — or at least Virtual Reality in its original 80s form: helmets, 3D, the works. Since then, his pundity has become an intelligent, annoying and often insightful thorn in the side of mainstream digital culture. His latest volley is against a meta-concept that underlies the Wikipedia and much of Web 2.0 — the belief that ‘no-one is smarter than everyone’:

The problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it’s been elevated to such importance so quickly. And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force. This is different from representative democracy, or meritocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods. The fact that it’s now being re-introduced today by prominent technologists and futurists, people who in many cases I know and like, doesn’t make it any less dangerous.

It’s a good, contrarian, rant. Enjoy.

[Via the ever-stimulating Edge]