He does notice a few that are philosophically important, beyond “Don’t believe anything on Wikipedia”: Neutral Point of View is always impossible in theory, very often impossible in practiceThe wasted energy on edit wars, and the eventual appeal to a higher power (i.e. Jimbo) who makes undemocratic decisionsCounter to the theory of “greatness through mediocrity”, the decline of articles from “Featured” status–this shouldn’t be the case, if everything, theoretically, moves towards perfection.The dislike of experts:Experts are derided on Wikipedia because they don’t tend to follow the rules…. And when you say “well, screw you” and then undo it and they realise that they can’t follow the rules, they leave.His apt conclusion is that Wikipedia started as “an idea of human knowledge edited by everybody, with no idea of how human beings actually are.”… Yet, as Neil Postman notes, just because the media has effected the way we tend to read and write, or the way reading and writing is going to become, doesn’t mean it is necessarily beneficial.I think that wiki’s, perhaps not Wikipedia itself, are going to be an essential part of our future cultural creation.

There is a post about wiki’fied, linked and open-sourced books.Interesting, especially the future desire to publish the book in hardcopy…. For some reason Leaves of Grass comes to mind.Presumably, if this method of open production becomes widespread enough, could we see an entire new generation of academics and scholars whose pastime is to track versions of network books. Scholarly papers tracking the evolution, through both the wiki’fied “history” pages and the various printed editions.

How do we tag them, save them, organize them.I read the Wall Street Journal and several trade pubs, and I often find ideas that I want to retain…. For magazines or newspapers in hard copy, the author, article title, publication title and date should be enough.Then, take notes, think, brainstorm.The real trick comes later. At the end of the day/week/month, depending on how productive and anal you are, you have to input the notes into your system.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the essay today as I walked around Toronto, eating a small cone of ice cream from the truck, watching all the business people scurry around.I was thinking about writing an essay about the essay, and on what no one really writes them much anymore…. About how the essay has nothing at all to do with text length–although bloggers tend to erroneously think of themselves as essayists–and everything to do with exploration, experimentation and the strolling way they go around a topic without really getting to the heart of anything.This is the real reason I think nobody cares about the essay: they not only want it short, but they also want it to the point…. Taking its name from the French word essai, meaning “attempt,” an essay doesn’t set out to tell a complete, narrative story, but rather simply tosses out an idea like a trial balloon.

It is interesting that that book got me off of philosophy in the formal sense, and into information studies.I am writing on a wonderful blog posting client called Ecto, which can add links to Amazon, make categories and tags etc. I only wish Blogger was more feature filled.No point waiting for the MacBooks in the 12″ size, I could never afford them anyway…. It can’t open many programs at once, even after putting more ram in it.However, I know its speed, the way it moves…. My hands have fit its keyboard, so learning the size of a new computer poses some problems.Already after a week with even the bottom of the line OS X machine, I already have a hard time going back to my old computer–I mostly VNC over to it and use the desktop for Bittorrent downloads and song storage.