I've got a bone to pick with a recent article I read feature on Library stuff.
It's pretty simple. Wikipedia, love it or hate it, is not a monolithic entity. It's diverse by definition. That's the point. Information quality lies on a spectrum. Yes, there are vandals, yes, you can do silly things like cite an edit you yourself made. There are inherent flaws...
BUT
Making blanket statements like "[Wikipedia] ultimately lessens the quality of whatever you were trying to do" ignores the very nature of Wikipedia itself.
There are in fact some very high quality articles on Wikipedia. Not all of them. Some. But you'll only be able to say that through direct comparison with other sources.
Don't confuse Wikipedia with lazy academics. Go ahead and start your search with Wikipedia. Do the work, come back and make it better!
Posted: February 15, 2009 2:17 pm | 1 comment
Tags: digital culture, research, Wikipedia
Just some ideas spurred by this silly Apple concept video from the 80s. The last 20 years have certainly expanded computing power but at the same time I think this demonstrates how we've moved toward more viable human-computer information interaction... also, c'mon, a bowtie?
I know playing futurist is a bit like a one-person checkers game, so bear with me:
Free wireless internet, everywhere.
Large battery capacity and a hand crank or some easy way to optionally live off the grid.
Uses free and open source software, physically the devices has no proprietary ports.
Data is shared via bit-torrent between devices to decentralize server and power load.
It wouldn't just zoom. You should be able to resize the image based on needs, maybe using a nano-scale projector (that didn't overheat) or some sort of non-clunky goggle or other ocular enhancement.
Annotation, ala Skim or Youtube's new commentary function (pop-up video style)
it would have built in analog capture functionality for use i
... more ยปPosted: February 22, 2009 11:25 am | 0 comments
Tags: Digital Libraries, Internet Archive, Kindle, Miro, Mobile Devices, olpc, superfluous futurism
