Well, wikipedia is free to consume. Sure there are errors, but it's not alone there--there's a page on Brittanica errors wikipedia corrected.

Anyway, I think it has less to do with people wanting everything for free and more to do with wanting more control over that which isn't free and yet they "pay" for. The anti-copyright movement is really more symptomatic of not getting the benefit of the bargain they were promised. An idea I'm somewhat sympathetic to.

Let me ask a new version of that:

Is costly information that is incorrect, inaccurate, and incomplete really valuable?

The real value in democratically created content is that it provides, for the first time in history, a real marketplace for ideas and their expression. You (or Carr) may call it amateurism. I call it an extraordinary excercise in truth finding.

Why should we have more faith in the non-bias of FOX or CNN than in that of a handful of bloggers we've come to trust, or more faith in the authors and editors of Brittanica than of wikipedia? Are you saying that I, as a consumer of this information, am too stupid to recognize bias when I see it?

Or is it that the 'professionalism' of the traditional purveyors is supposed to lull me into a trance of confidence in everything they say -- that I just need to believe in their authority and everything will be good?

I propose the opposite: when you have non- and semi-professionals creating content at will, it becomes much easier to see the truth bubbling up than it is when you have to wade through the sophistry of professional writers. Taken together with being able to sample virtually any opinion on a subject from the multitude of voices (blogs, wikis, etc), we have the ability to analyze truth as never before.

But, of course, if you are more comfortable getting your 'truth' from the 'professionals,' by all means, stick to it.

Hey Jackson –

Thanks for the comment on Phosita, I tend to agree with you re: “democratically created” content/information – but I do still have some concerns, not so much as with bias, as I do with truth and accuracy.

Is it your position that there is no longer any need for accuracy checking or fact checking or do you believe that the blogosphere and other Web 2.0 content creators will be the ones to fact check and ensure accuracy? (or anyone for that matter…)

As a science guy, I worry that the rigorous back and forth and peer reviewed process will take a while to develop in this new sphere of information and content development. In the meantime, what do we do?

Thanks again for the comment – it is an interesting topic of conversation.

Is it your position that there is no longer any need for accuracy checking or fact checking or do you believe that the blogosphere and other Web 2.0 content creators will be the ones to fact check and ensure accuracy?

Under the democratic model, fact-checking is done at the individual level. I know that sounds scary -- even I find it hard not to distrust "the mob" -- but hasn't this model proven to be the most efficient and effective elsewhere (poliitical democracy, free press, free markets, etc)?

There is a certain 'growing-up' that we have to do as a society before this becomes maximally effective. Just as the introduction of modern advertising slowly forced consumers into a reluctant skepticism, so too must we build a skepticism into what we read and hear. This is healthy -- certainly more healthy than the blind trust that many of our citizens now place in their current sources of information: network and cable news, magazines and weeklies with obscured (but always present) bias, popular movies with subtle agendas, etc.

The 'democratic experiment' that resulted in the foundation of the United States was met with similar skepticism -- without professionals, aristocrats, and plutocrats, how would the riff-raff ever be able to choose lawmakers that would be anything but incredibly incompetent? Who would to the fact-checking there? And yet it worked, arguably much better than the old model of hierarchy, control, and censorship.

Like you, I consider myself a 'science guy', and I don't mean to denigrate the power of peer review. Quite the opposite; the blogosphere is peer review on steriods. Blogs link to other blogs, users comment on comments, critiquing critiques, and generally adding to the richness of the whole thing. Much as (I hope) you and I are doing right now.

This isn't just a Web 2.0 thing. Before there were blogs there were homepages. Before there were homepages there were newsgroups. We've already had several decades to get used to this democratic-content thing, and yet everytime a new gadget comes along (whether it be the original Web, the wiki, or the blog) we fret about whether people will be smart enough to know that not everything they see or read is true. By and large, they are smart enough. Mistrusting their judgement is a miscalculation.

I just want you to know I find your blog facinating and I put a link to it in my blog. Keep up the good work!