The Debate over Quantity vs. Quality: "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

Nicholas Carr's Atlantic article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" presents a polarizing view of the effect of immediate 24/7 internet access connectivity.  The usefulness of the internet is central to the question of open access versus authoritative and verifiable content--the problem of content quantity vs. content quality. The spirited responses to the article by Clay Shirky and Larry Sanger are captured on the Edge's Reality Club blog.  Clay Shirky and the open access individuals see the question in terms of filter failure, not necessarily information overload.  Information is going to continue to grow, so avenues to manage content become important.  He gives a good talk on journalism and the public good, and why pay walls do not serve the public, in contrast to Steve Brill who is trying to leverage government to seek an antitrust exemption for media pricing.  Larry Sanger argues for a more authoritative and verifiable approach to content containment.  He argues that our "grasp and respect of reliable information suffers" at the hands of too much opinion and not enough verifiable content.  He is not suggesting open discourse is not welcome, but he believes expertise and professionalism is necessary.

The question of content quality has broad ramifications in many areas such as government, politics, news information, and others.  The debate over content quality seems to break into the two competing paradigms of amateurs vs. professionals that the Wikipedia founders split into.  Laws and copyrights protections for professionals do not necessarily square with amateur participation.  Interestingly, Nature magazine did a peer-reviewed study of science entries on both Wikipedia and Britannica and found that they both had "similar degrees of accuracy in their content."  In an effort to narrow my argument, I may look to education as an area where verifiable content is essential.

Opening Up Academia

Brun argues in Chapter 13 "Educating Produsers, Produsing  Education" that academic institutions must lead change with some combination of traditional and new approaches.  Academic publishing and peer-review are already well established processes.  Brun suggests that institutions may have to shift their emphasis from in-house development and production to include the service of quality assurance both internally and externally.  He cites the examples of the science communities' sucessful open source projects.