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The Wikis Are Coming, The Wikis Are Coming!
We've written about the Wikipedia several times in the past, beginning with a degree of skepticism but happy to climb on the bandwagon a few months later. And in the past month, it seems wikis are popping up everywhere.
The US intelligence community is now using open-source wiki technology to support an information sharing platform. The "Intellipedia" allows analysts from all 16 agencies to publish
their findings in one place, keeping them constantly up to date with late-breaking information. Unlike the Wikipedia, the analysts attach their names to their entries, and 3,600 individuals have
registered to participate since the system went live last April.
In the view of some, the Wikipedia's weak point (nicely satirized in the The Onion) is that the anonymity of its contributors and the lack of peer review undermines its credibility. KM guru David Gurteen has pointed us at a Wikipedia spin-off, called Citizendium. It also intends to be a compendium of knowledge,
but will augment the Wikipedia's all-volunteer army with "the gentle guidance" of acknowledged subject matter experts. Citizendium's goal is to give regular people a place to work, but add the
expectation of personal accountability (and the use of real names).
One of Google's latest acquisitions is the company called JotSpot, a wiki technology firm founded in 2004. JotSpot says "thousands" of customers are already using its product as an alternative to more cumbersome collaboration tools and hard-to-update intranet pages, making it a real contender in the enterprise collaboration space.
It could be that wikis are the future of Knowledge Management. (If you're not all that clear on what a wiki is, there's a good backgrounder at Tectonic.)
Friends, Friends and More Friends
Sometimes, Knowledge Street catches one of those waves in cyber culture in advance of the mass media. Just last month, we ran an article that questioned the assumption that the web is increasing human connectedness. On line, you can have superficial relationships with hundreds, even
thousands of people. Is that better than having close relationships with a few?
In the New York Times this past Sunday, John Schwartz described the experience of being "friendbombed" after signing up for a page at Facebook.com. He'd taken that step as a way to keep in touch with his son and daughter, both of whom accepted him as a "friend."
But then his son went a step further, forming a group called "Friend My Father" and inviting people to have at it. The senior Mr. Schwartz was swamped by email from potential friends, an experience not unlike a distributed denial of service attack.
He writes "In many ways, the Internet strengthens relationships by allowing easy communication over a distance. But without a human touch, it’s hard to keep the conversation going..." We agree, like, totally!
It’s the Interface, Stupid
One of the K Street principals spent yesterday as a poll worker, getting an up close and
personal taste of American democracy. One development this year is the introduction of electronic voting machines in many states, replacing old-fashioned mechanical systems or really old-fashioned paper
ballots. In New Jersey, we’ve been moving toward electronic voting for a few years now, so it's not new to some of us.
Controversies about electronic voting aside, we now have first hand evidence that supports the importance of the interface. At the polls, an estimated 58.762% of voters expressed something between frustration and disappointment at the experience. These days, you duck under a curtain that's always closed, touch a panel to make your selection, push a button, and... nothing happens. If you look for it, you can find a display that says "VOTE SUBMITTED." That's it.
The old mechanical machines delivered a far more satisfying experience. Step into the booth, flip a lever and a curtain closes dramatically behind you. Each selection comes with a satisfying
click, and the comfortable visible reinforcement of a nice red "X." Flip the lever back, your selections disappear and the curtain opens.
Whatever happens in the back end systems, and
however the votes are actually tallied, we miss the physicality of those old machines. That really felt like voting.
New Hope for the Technologically Challenged
Knowledge Street is an official member of the Jeremy Wagstaff fan club, and we enjoy both his articles in the Wall Street Journal and the posts at his blog. British by birth, he's based in Jakarta and brings a dry wit and an appealing, common sense point of view to the job of writing about
technology. More than a few articles in Directions have been inspired by Mr. Wagstaff.
In September, we got to see a prepublication version of his first book, which is a compendium of
articles from the past few years. It's organized in four sections, devoted to "getting stuff done" (email, productivity tools and back-up advice), "getting connected" (WiFi, mobile
phones and VoIP), "getting what you need" (browsers, blogs and RSS) and "getting out of trouble" (viruses, spam and credit card fraud). There's also an entertaining "Lexicon for
Luddites," with some suggested terms for the modern age. “Wantage," for example, is defined as the shortfall between your present computer's capacity and that required to run the program you
just bought.
Now, just in time for the holidays, you can get your own copy of Loose Wire at Amazon.com. It's a perfect gift for anyone on your list who's not getting all they could from their tools. Which to be honest, is just about everybody. Consider it highly recommended.
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