Posted by Wiki Culture and the End of Practical Obscurity
This post first appeared in Socially Mediated Life
I learned a new term the other day from Zeynep Tufekci, one that lawyers use to call information that is essentially accessible but not necessarily easily available… “practical obscurity”.
Think of all the Canadian government documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Yes, we’re free to obtain them but it can be a bit of a hassle to do so. As a result, only a fraction of the documents available through the act are actually obtained or disseminated. But wiki culture is changing that. Wikileaks is opening up our diplomatic cables and corporate files and Wikipedia has become the go to source for settling trivia arguments (among other things).
What else has digital technology freed from practical obscurity?
This is a bit of a quibble, Jason, but despite the nomenclature, I’m not sure it makes sense to lump Wikileaks and Wikipedia together. In what sense is Wikileaks, the organization, collaborative? It isn’t even quick, which is the original meaning of wiki (it’s Hawaiian).
Wikileaks, the name, is more a clever bit of branding. It allows Assange et. al. to tap into positive sentiment, while practicing what is at base espionage. Which is not to say it is bad – I am a big fan of Wikileaks and greater transparency. But Wikileaks is not wiki culture, as you assert.
I think we’re talking about varying degrees of wiki-ness and wikipedia is definitely more wiki than wikileaks
Glad we agree, Jason!
More on topic, David Eaves gave a great lecture at OCAD last year about some of the ways governments can harness Web 2.0 tech to be more transparent, and also more efficient. It was a great presentation:
http://academic.ocad.ca/videos/index.cfm?image=105701