Nothing surprising that academia studies the effects of Wikipedia on everything from online collaboration to coffee making (ok so the latter is an exaggeration, maybe) but it was very nice to see that Wikipedia has a page that collects academic research on Wikipedia. Now that I think about it – it seems obvious that Wikipedia has such a page.
Whatever, it’s a useful page.
XKCD has done a strip on the conflict of calculus invention.
Most stories of calculus (but wikipedia does a very nice history) tend to forget all the work done by the ancient and medieval mathematicians (not to mention the foreigners) and skip straight away into the Newton vs Leibniz conflict.
The problem was that Newton didn’t publish his work so when Leibniz figured out a system for the calculus of infinitesimals he was accused of plagiarism by Newton. The petty academic discussion continued for a while and Leibniz was apparently very hurt the great man’s accusations.
The image at the end with Newton in shades is a perfect example of the man who was a bit of a diva.
Åsa M. Larsson archeologist and blogger (Ting & Tankar) has finished her PhD thesis! She will be defending at 1 pm at Friday 18 September (Geijer auditorium, building 6, Humanities Centre, Engelska Parken, Uppsala).
Her work is on osteo-archaeology about the Middle Neolithic B in the Lake Mälaren area, c. 2800-2400 cal BC. Nope, I didn’t get that either! Maybe its because I am a lawyer? Anyway, she has the coolest title: Breaking and Making Bodies and Pots. Material and Ritual Practices in South Sweden in the Third Millennium BC. Aun 40. Department of Archaeology and Ancient History. Uppsala University.
For some reason Swedish archeologists are active bloggers. Wonder why?
Great work Åsa!
It’s soon time for the Gikii 4 conference which will be held in Amsterdam during 18-19 September – this year it is organized by the Institute for Information Law (IViR). I am particularly happy since I will be attending with a paper of my own.
The program for the conference is here. Just to give you an idea of the type of stuff presented there here are a couple of papers being presented (full list here).
Luddism 2.0, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Web
ZombAIs and family law: technology beyond the grave
“Get out of my head, bloodsucker!” Notions of surveillance in the vampire mind
EAT ME
Robot Law?
Future Tech: Governance & Ethics In The Age Of Artificially Enhanced Man (Or ‘Beware The Zombais At The Gate’)
As you can see from this short list Gikii is definately on the bizarre side of technology law.
It’s almost hard to think of a time when Wikimedia was not the source of all knowledge. After having survived the quality wars (is Wiki as good as printed Encyclopedia), amazing growth, lawsuits & legal threats, internal squabbles and international expansion – today Wikimedia seems as permanent and natural as summer holidays.
But Ed Chi at the Palo Alto Research Center is interviewed by New Scientist:
The number of articles added per month flattened out at 60,000 in 2006 and has since declined by around a third. They also found that the number of edits made every month and the number of active editors both stopped growing the following year, flattening out at around 5.5 million and 750,000 respectively. (read more on this here)
The Wikimedia Foundation has bagun a strategic review of Wikipedia to better understand why the changes to Wikipedia are occurring. Chi argues that a main part of the problem is the growing number of Wikimedia “experts”, in other words people who are experts on Wikipedia. They become a problem since experts on a specific topic are unable to compete with wiki-experts time and expertise in an eventual debate. I have commented earlier on the inclusionists v deletionists issue.
Chi thinks that Wikipedia now includes so much information that some editors have turned from creating new articles to improving existing ones, resulting in more disputes about edits. Such disputes are not a level playing field because established editors sometimes draw on extensive knowledge of Wikipedia’s guidelines to overwhelm opposition in a practice dubbed “wikilawyering”.
In part some of the more devoted editors of wikipedia (wikipedia experts) are becoming more fascinated with wikipedia, as opposed to the content. The whole point of wikipedia should be it’s ability to easily provide information (preferably expert information) but as many discussion pages show – content is not king. Wikilawyering is definately discouraging participation by experts.
Short definitions are the most difficult. Being put under duress I finally completed this one on web2.0. What do you think?
The standardized open communications platform allowed for the development of a diverse range of web-based applications that have been collectively defined as Web2.0 applications. The concept of Web2.0 focuses on the changing role of the user from a ‘passive’ consumer of information to a more active role as information contributor.
The main change between Web1.0 and 2.0 in relation to this is the growth of alternative information sources outside the control of traditional media. With an increasing simplification in web applications ordinary users increasingly have the ability to make, store and communicate their content online. This contributory culture may take many forms from the sharing of copyrightable material to writing and collecting of product and service reviews.
Many of the most popular Web2.0 sites have in a relatively short period of time become some of the most important online sites. Since its conception in 1999 the World Wide Web has been a platform for communication and collaboration. However the main period of Web2.0 development came after the new millennium.
In addition to the changing role of the user into information contributor the Web2.0 umbrella has come to include the increasingly popular social networking applications that allow users to easily connect and communicate with each other.
The use of the web as a platform for simplified personal communication can be said to originate with blogging (the term was first used around 1997). The next big steps in user production came with the launch of Wikipedia in 2001, the Flickr photo sharing site in 2004 and the video-sharing site YouTube in 2005. Social networking milestones include the launch of Facebook in 2004 and Twitter in 2006.
This form of social networking focuses on building online communities of people with commons interests, the advantage of these new sites lies in the simplicity of their web-based applications made available to the users at no cost. Concerns about privacy have been raised due to the practice of social networking sites to store and use information (Grimmelmann 2009).
Web2.0 has been criticized, by among others Tim Berners Lee, as being only a piece of jargon not really adding anything to the concept of the web (Laningham 2006). While others (e.g. Keen 2007) have criticized it for being amateurish productions, narcissistic in focus and leading in the long run to the demise of traditional professional media.
However despite the criticism of the terminology the practice of user generated content and social networking is here to stay.
Like many bloggers I have occasionally indulged in online self-examination and questioned why I blog (here, here & here). Obviously there are many reasons why to blog (personally I do it because it’s fun). But I have never really considered the effects of my blogging. Not the effects on other people, but the effects on me.
So far in my blogging I have been happy to write posts. They are a quick and comfortable way to organise and spread thoughts and ideas. Didn’t think much more about it. But then I came across a quote – which I cannot find right now, how typical. Anyway the quote was from a writer who said he did not like to talk about what he was writing about becuase… it ruined his creative tension.
I find the idea of maintaining a creative tension very interesting. Blogging is fun and can be used successfully to organize and communicate but could it have a negative effect on other writing? Writing blog posts not only take time and effort but is also very rewarding.
The rewarding part is actually not all good as it does produce a feeling of well being. And this well being does acutally remove part of the motivation to continue writing. Obviously I have no intention of giving up my blogging but I may need to come up with a better strategy to prevent blogging from killing the motivation to write other stuff.
Some early morning copyright humor from Norway via Olav Torvund‘s blog. Apparently the researcher who found the fossil Ida, Jørn Hurum wants to hold copyright in the fossil (in Norwegian). A quick reminder of what we are talking about here, from the Guardian:
Ida is believed to be the most complete primate fossil ever discovered. She is 95% intact and so well preserved that her tissues, hair and even her stomach contents are visible. By comparison, the much more recent fossil “Lucy” from Ethiopia is only 40% complete.
And for what noble cause does this academic want copyright? Well he tells the newspaper that he wants the exclusive right to put the image on caps, t-shirts and childrens soft toys.
Statements like this should make us copyright speakers think! With all the noise about copyright in society today many people, even highly educated people, just don’t get copyright. They don’t understand how it works today even less why some groups argue that it does not work today.
Hopefully Jørn Hurum and the Museum of Natural history will read Olav blog or be informed by someone else that copyright expires 70 years after the creators death… and may be a tad difficult to apply to a 47 million year old corpse.
Finally finished the mind-numbingly boring work of reading proofs for a manual on the GPL license. It’s so boring that I have broken records in procrastination but today surrounded by loud music I stayed at home and finished. In front of me is my latest acquisitio, a color lithograph graphic by Claude Weisbuch which I brought home today.
While on the subject of art I cannot help but spreading this anecdote about Dali which I just read on _Paddy K_
Apparently Dali liked to eat out, with large groups of friends in tow, but was not so fond of paying the bill. So he made a point of paying using a check from his checkbook and, just before handing the check over, scribbled a little drawing on the back and signed it.
And now the owner, suddenly in possession of a signed Dali, would usually just frame it and hang it on the wall and show it to his friends instead of cashing it at the bank.
Sitting with licenses is sooo boring.
