Hintonblogger

One other quick thought from today's sessions.  The keynote tonight was by David Weinberger and he addressed "The New Shape of Knowledge." His most interesting concept was that knowledge today is in many ways conversation.  He set up the idea very well and is an engaging speaker.  While that concept may sound a bit relativistic, I don't think it necessarily dismisses that fact that there are absolutes out there.  The argument he made was that today, with the decentralized acquisition of information made possible by the Internet and global communication, the knowledge we gain is not made in isolation but by the ties and interaction that technology has thrust upon us.  Blogs, the Internet, global audio and video communication, wikis have made producers of knowledge out of those who were previously only consumers and that we are richer for it.  He compared wikipedia.com to the current Encyclopedia Brittanica and that fact that wikipedia.com has 600,000 articles on different topics, while the Encyclopedia has only 65,000 (and at 32 volumes the print version simply cannot get any bigger).  Because of this interconnectivity, we are seeing an expansion of knowledge as well as (in his opinion) the improvement of our knowledge.  Check out http://www.wikipedia.org and tell me if you think our knowledge is really expanding and improving (I'll be checking it out too)?

P.S. For those who don't know what a wiki is, it is essentially user-contributed documentation.  Meaning anyone can go on Wikipedia.com and post or even edit articles with very little restrictions.  While you may expect complete garbage or bizarre of-the-wall things, I think you'll be surprised of the quality of much of what is there.  Drop me a line to let me know your thoughts at or check out the new home for my blog and leave a comment - something you can't do here at bloglines.  I'm going to continue blogging here at bloglines through NECC and then continue posting over at hintonblogger.  For now I'll be posting at both places.