Musing on Nupedia and 'knol'

My first thought upon reading Google's announcement of its knowledge repository - called 'knol' - was that it's been tried before: Nupedia espoused similar goals before its demise. Subsequent thoughts included:

• Writing an article is a lot of work: will the benefits make it worthwhile? (Ad revenue would help with this.) The benefits of name recognition may be tough to quantify before you reach real renown, for example.


• A picture and biography of the author raise questions too: playing on their book analogy, I do check the dustcover occasionally, but it's rarely the deciding factor; particularly when I'm looking for an authority on a subject (as opposed to reading for pleasure, for example): the calibre and number of recommendations, followed by the quality of the writing are much more important to me. Also, I tend to agree with the criticism of journalists who include their pictures next to their newspaper articles: shouldn't the writing speak for itself? (Although, admittedly, this does seem fairly innocuous nonetheless.)

The circumstances surrounding Nupedia leave me of two minds: one could say that Wikipedia's rise detracted from Nupedia by offering a potentially less time-consuming means of contributing. However, one could also say that Wikipedia's rise brought attention to open knowledge in general, and that experts would quickly recognize what many more people have since: there are limits to the utility of articles that are perpetually open to modification by all; a sister site with Nupedia's philosophy could be attractive to that community of experts.

Whether Nupedia implemented that philosophy is open to debate. Certainly, and I say this with a tinge of irony, its Wikipedia article details a number of flaws. For my own part, I was content to copyedit articles in my subject area of computer science, so I have difficulty believing that experts suffering comments from anonymous reviewers with no knowledge of the subject area was endemic or little more than 'growing pains', as it were. Again, I know I had doubts as to whether I would be accepted as a CS reviewer with only a BCS to my name.

I'll be watching 'knol' with great interest. In addition to the tarnish Wikipedia has accumulated in recent years, the other, probably far more significant, circumstance associated with knol's introduction is its sponsor, and the enormous buzz that comes with it. Many will rightly say that if Google can't do this, no one can for the foreseeable future.

Information and Human Nature

Michael Gorman, president-elect of the American Library Association, created a ripple when he questioned Google's dream of taking over the universe by gathering all the information in the world and creating the electronic equivalent of, in their own modest words, the mind of God. (Search on Google and God's Mind if you don't want to register with the Los Angeles Times.) However, I think Google, Gorman and his detractors are all missing an important point, and it centres around human nature.

While Gorman makes some good points in Google and God's Mind, his notion that only certain books need to be digitized - "massive databases of digitized whole books, especially scholarly books, are expensive exercises in futility" - is really splitting hairs; how they're used afterward is more important, as he implies in his second piece, Revenge of the Blog People: I do not believe [Google Print] will give us anything that comes anywhere near access to the world's knowledge.

It's how the information is used afterward, how knowledge is accumulated, that's really important. I'll use another quote from Google and God's Mind to illustrate my point:

The nub of the matter lies in the distinction between information (data, facts, images, quotes and brief texts that can be used out of context) and recorded knowledge (the cumulative exposition found in scholarly and literary texts and in popular nonfiction). When it comes to information, a snippet from Page 142 might be useful. When it comes to recorded knowledge, a snippet from Page 142 must be understood in the light of pages 1 through 141 or the text was not worth writing and publishing in the first place.

Gorman says must be understood, but really it's up to the reader; if they want to draw their own conclusions from a paragraph on Page 142, that's their prerogative, and this is where my point about human nature comes in.

Morgan Jones talks about convergent and divergent thinking in The Thinker's Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving, and how humans are convergent thinkers at heart. That is, in our reading and research, we are inherently trying to tie it all up and converge on a solution or opinion, if you will; that's the way our brain works. Now, going back to Gorman's example, what the Google Print project will facilitate is the converging of an opinion based on Page 142 of that particular book, and maybe a few pages from some other books, with the reader never having read pages 1 through 141, or the preceding pages of the other books.

But that's like saying guns kill people, John. Yes, you're absolutely right, and I'm not knocking the Google Print project. I say that Google, Gorman and others are missing the responsiblity that these sorts of initiatives place on our education system. As people read fewer books cover to cover, teaching people how to think critically and research becomes all the more important. Given our convergent natures, I can see a time when kids rate their research on the number of sound bites they've skimmed (and, no doubt, how quickly they've done it as well). Educating them on proper research techniques means that they'll be able to make the best use of the most powerful tools as they're developed (like Google Print).

It's a pretty amazing time we're living in. I often find myself taking it for granted; at no time is this clearer than in conversations with older generations. I'll be talking with my mom about a movie, and she'll wonder whether a particular actor was in a particular movie. Immediately I'm thinking about the Internet Movie Database, and if I'm on the portable, I'll be there in a flash, spitting out the answer with nary a second thought. This, of course, still floors my mother. She doesn't own a computer, so beyond the growing tendency of a brief punch of information, with more available - to many, but not her - on the World Wide Web, she's oblivious to the potential of the Internet.

But that's just the tip of its utility. If I hear an expression, if someone refers to a historic moment, if I have any sort of question, my knee-jerk reaction is to bring up my browser and start searching for more information. If I live to see the day of ubiquitous, wearable, Internet-connected technology, it could very well be the end of me. I can see it now:

Man Perishes on Park Bench: Forgets to Eat During Three-day Search for Atlantis

I bring all this up because I'm amazed at how much the Encyclopedia of Arda is enhancing my reading of The Lord of the Rings. I've just started Book II - the Council of Elrond is met - and I'm sure I've already spent two hours reading encyclopedia entries, following the hyperlinks through the ages of Middle-earth and lands beyond. It's truly a wonder! For example, as soon as Merry mentioned the men of Carn Dûm (in his daze after being rescued from the Barrow-wight), I looked up their entry in the encyclopedia.

In reading the book(s) for the third time, my plan is to continue through the appendices to The Silmarillion, The Book of Lost Tales and the other volumes in the history of Middle-earth. With the Encyclopedia of Arda just a few keystrokes away, I'm sure to save many hours of hunting through books for references that I can't quite remember. And since all the entries are dated, you always have an idea about which book(s) contain the original material.