Several months back, I had the pleasure of reading David Weinberger's book, Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room. (You can also find it in the Noblenet Library System to borrow, here). Rather than go on and on about the book, which I easily could, I lucked into the chance to interview him for this blog. Following up on his book, I got the opportunity to hear David speak and even the opportunity to interview him. For more details about David, you can check out his brief bio on the Berman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
Lance: Let’s start
with two fun questions: Have you looked
at your Wikipedia Page? Have you been
tempted to modify it?
David: Not in years.
Of course I'm tempted to modify it. I don't think anyone ever fully agrees with
anything anyone ever says about her/him :)
And at one point it said I'm a Canadian, which is factually wrong;
someone fixed that eventually.
Lance: So besides the
title, what would be the best tweet-length description of the book?
David: The Internet
is letting us scale up knowledge, which is changing knowledge's nature. #2b2k . Not very exciting, but under 140 characters.
Lance: What were some
of the surprises or unexpected information/responses you had in composing the
book?
David: Hmm. Writing
is how I think and learn, so the fun part is that it's almost all surprising to
me. To be specific: I don't know.
Lance: Do you think
copyright law will change? Do you feel organizations
like Creative Commons have it right or is there another uncharted arena with
which to explore?
David: CC works
within existing copyright law; it lets you specify a far more useful and human
set of terms, without requiring a change to copyright law. It's wonderful. But
as most CC'ers would agree, we also need to change the law.
Lance: You argue that
the Net isn’t as much as an echo-chamber as naysayers like to pretend it
is. That is, that people don't easily
slip into mob-mentality to validate and encourage their groupthink. Yet how would your argument apply to
something like cyber-bullying, where the same (if not similar) dynamic is at
play?
David: That's not
exactly what I meant. Echo chambers are real. But the fear that the Net is
nothing but an echo chamber seems to me to be based in part on a
misunderstanding of how conversation and understanding work. Conversation requires a huge amount of
agreement over values and beliefs, just as in an echo chamber. But nasty
negative echo chambers certainly exist.
Lance: Though you
applaud the multiplicity of knowledge in your book, you also note that there is
some knowledge that is or can be clearly wrong (To be honest; I forget if this
was specifically in the book or just from your lecture; can’t seem to find the
passage, so I’m not sure). Do you feel
society is heading towards a “knowledge cliff” in some capacity?
David: If the
post-cliff position is that we are not able to come to agreement, then we've
been over that cliff from the beginning. The Net has made it clear that we're
not going to come to agreement, even when the facts are clear. But we are also
discovering/inventing ways to deal fruitfully with disagreement. Not always,
but sometimes. There is hope, therefore -- not hope that we'll all agree
someday, but hope that we may learn to benefit from those disagreements.
Lance: Do you see any leaders (cultural, political, etc) that are working from the vantage point of the innate common ground between different groups/views?
David: These are what my friend Ethan Zuckerman calls "bridge" figures. He's writing about people interpreting one culture to another, but there are bridge figures across most of our differences. And, not to be too much of a Reddit fanboy, but IAMA's are a forum designed as bridges. As for particular people, well, I'm terrible at that type of recall.
Lance: You discuss a
lot of the positive elements of the Internet, but what bothers/frustrates you
the most about the Internet and the new forms of “knowledge”?
David: Everything,
except info overload. I don't buy that we're overloaded. But I am deeply
disturbed by the fact that people now can more firmly believe wrong ideas.
Lance: What advice do
you have for those who encounter the Internet with trepidation about the
information potentially made available to them?
David: Grow up. If
you want your information spoon-fed by a bunch of white men, get in your time
machine and go back 20 years. Otherwise, if you genuinely don't know what to
believe on the Internet, find some real-world friends on the Net and find some
mainstream authorities on the Net, and listen to them.
Lance: What do you
think will be the characteristics of next phenomenon on the Internet?
David: We won't know
until it happens. It may perhaps have to do with something that we can do at
scale that we otherwise couldn't have imagined.
Lance: You talk about
the idea that human brains can't process the depth of knowledge and complexity
in the world and on the Internet? Are we
on the path to the singularity?
David: If
"singularity" means being able to transfer consciousness to
computers, then no. That dream is based on an unwarranted belief that brains
are purely formal, and that anything in that form -- i.e., that has the same
relationships among the neurons -- is conscious. That confuses the map with the
territory. If "singularity" means we can do amazing things due to
exponential growth, then we've been there for 20 years.
Lance: What
challenges does the new information frontier hold for educational institutes
big and small?
David: The focus on
educating individuals, learning as a private activity, the emphasis on
test-taking, the write-a-report model of learning, the evaluation of
individuals, the assumptions about long-form thinking, the reliance on
textbooks, the cost of education, the digital divide, the prestige of printed
journals...
Lance: How would
educators contend with this new frontier in an effective manner?
David: We'll know
when today's students are the senior teachers. But the most obvious things are:
1. Educate constantly in how to use the Web; 2. Encourage public, social,
web-form learning.
Lance: Besides of
course your own book, what recommendations for reading (books, articles, or
sites) might you have for an educator trying to get a better grasp around the
Internet and its implications for education?
.jpg){kind=link}