[-empyre-] WIKI Historigraphy

[Green Jo-Anne]

Hi Marco,

Thanks for this. As I said in my earlier post, Networked combines  
wiki and blog technology (on the blog side, one has to upload a new  
post to be able to compare versions; as is, this option is invisible,  
but it becomes an option once there is more than one version of the  
text).

Furthermore, all of the chapter authors were given a choice between a  
wiki and WP blog. Patrick is the only author who chose a wiki. I'm  
curious to know why everyone else chose the blog?

Warm Regards,
Jo


On Oct 6, 2009, at 11:26 AM, Marco Deseriis wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> here is Marco, one of the authors of Networked. I am supposed to  
> discuss
> my chapter later this month, but I'll take to freedom to jump ahead of
> the line to say something about wiki as used in Wikipedia vs. wiki as
> used in Networked. As we all know, wiki is an Hawaiian word that means
> "fast" and the potentiality of the software is harnessed at its best
> when there is an active community using it constantly and frequently.
>
> In his recent Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky points out that wiki's
> popularity (and Wikipedia's success) lies in its openness, i.e. in its
> ability "to take a staggering  amount of input with a minimum of
> overhead." (p. 120) This allows a large number of contributors to
> participate, no matter how amateurish or idiosyncratic their
> contributions may be. Everyone can start an article on Wikipedia (in
> Wikipedia's jargon "write a stub"). No matter how short and  
> rudimentary
> this article may be, argues Shirky, a stub "can be the anchor for the
> good article that will eventually appear. *It is very inadequacy
> motivates people to improve it.*" (pp. 121-122) We may say that
> ultimately the power of Wikipedia lies in a low-fi, DIY punk  
> ethics. (An
> ethics which is perhaps also an "aesthetics," depending on how you
> define the term).
>
> Networked on the other hand is making quite a different use of the  
> wiki.
> We have been invited to use a wiki when the chapters were still
> unpublished, i.e. for the editing process. After Helen, Jo, and  
> Eduardo
> finished commenting on our drafts, and we responded to their  
> comments by
> editing more or less extensively our writings, the chapters were moved
> to the current Wordpress blog, which enables readers to add comments,
> but not to change the main text. So the difference is not only, as  
> Anna
> says, that readers cannot access previous versions of the chapters,  
> but
> mostly that they cannot intervene in our chapters with the same  
> level of
> freedom a wiki user would have. In other words, Networked is based  
> on an
> entirely different model of publishing from Wikipedia, less based on
> collaborative production and more on a diffused social testing of some
> critical and theoretical positions.
>
> Obviously, one may say that a Wikipedia contributor can benefit  
> directly
> from his/her own intervention, in that he/she can see the result of it
> immediately. Networked on the other hand may not advance such a clear
> "bargain" (another keyword in Shirky's book) in that it is unclear  
> what
> kind of pleasure and reward a user may get from posting a comment  
> on the
> Wordpress blog. But here is where, I believe, the fact that the  
> chapters
> are not bound together and do not form a coherent whole (yet) becomes
> crucial. Because each chapter is, in a sense, part of many possible
> books, there is a gap there for readers to pick what interests them,
> develop a dialog with one or multiple authors, use a chapter for a  
> class
> or a performance for instance, thus slowly contributing to the  
> migration
> of the book from its current 1.0 phase to the 2.0 and 3.0 stages Jo  
> was
> mentioning in her previous post. It obviously requires time and
> dedication to do that, but empyre seems to be one likely  
> conversational
> space where people may be attracted to some of the themes developed in
> the book.
>
> Cheers,
> Marco Deseriis
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Lichty, Patrick wrote:
>> Wikipedia has the advantage of being a wiki which means that it  
>> also allows for an archiving of its own textual history. While its  
>> true that events change its most recent text, it's also the case  
>> that one can return to older histories/archives of the entry at  
>> hand. In fact this is something I spend a lot of time pointing out  
>> to my students as one of its most salient features and I get them  
>> to spend time with which and what version of information they are  
>> using.
>>
>> *****************************
>> Now, THIS is something really interesting (and new) when  
>> considering the historiography of electronic media.  Imagine  
>> actually being able to map the revision change of one's historical  
>> records!  This could be a thesis paper in itself - the  
>> historiography of the revision chain.
>>
>> So then, what does it mean in terms of a WIKI to be able to see  
>> the arc of one's revision over time spread out before them.
>>
>> Excellent question!
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

Jo-Anne Green
Co-Director
New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.
917.548.7780 or 617.522.3856
Turbulence: http://turbulence.org
Networked_Performance: http://turbulence.org/blog
Networked_Music_Review: http://turbulence.org/networked_music_review
Networked: http://networkedbook.org
New American Radio: http://somewhere.org
Upgrade! Boston: http://turbulence.org/upgrade_boston



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