The notion that the Internet and modern popular culture is somehow dumbing down society is a common one, thanks to the likes of LOLCats, John & Kate and The Real Housewives of Wherever. But in his keynote this morning at the Festival of Media in Valencia, Spain, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales made the case for why culture is actually making us smarter.
Wales, who arrived in Valencia Sunday after a 24-hour bus ride from London, drew comparisons between the way the web and social media have evolved to how we use them today, to the evolution of TV technology and storytelling. How we’ve gone from VCRs to web-enabled TiVOs, how TV comedies have gone from I Love Lucy to Seinfeld, and crime drama has grown from Dragnet to The Sopranos. And how fan participation has gone from message boards to properties like Lostpedia.
Created by Wales’ for-profit company Wikia, Lostpedia features more than 5,000 articles about the smallest detail in the popular show. “The ways we’re learning about and interacting with culture have changed,” said Wales. “What’s interesting about this for me is that this is not a one-way process. JJ Abrams, the show’s creator, is a huge fan of Lostpedia and they actually use it to make sure everything they do is consistent. So they’re able to create a more rich, compelling TV experience as a result.”
The Wales keynote was billed as a look “towards the next generation of the web and ask what all the new immersive technologies will mean for the next generation of consumers–and for commerce, communication and even democracy itself.” Pretty heady stuff, indeed.
Wales’ presentation did not contain quite so sweeping an analysis, but he did touch on a few of these ideas viewed through the spectrum of Wikipedia and Wikia, the latter, a free web-hosting service for wikis of any kind that Wales founded in 2004. While not nearly as well known as his non-profit venture, its traffic rivals that of the New York Times with only word-of-mouth promotion so far.
“What I’m trying to do is basically bring in a new age of media in which everyone has the opportunity to participate, and not just in the sense of randomly posting a Twitter comment, but actually participating in the building of something important,” said Wales. “Wikipedia was just the beginning. When you go to the library and ask for the encyclopedia, they bring you a big pile of books, but it’s nowhere near all that the library has.
“That’s what we’re looking at with Wikia, where we’re letting people build every kind of communication that a book might be, and it’s sort of what we thought Wikipedia might’ve been.”
As to what new immersive technologies might mean to democracy, Wales drew on his experience with Wikipedia in China.
He equated the question of whether a media company should be doing business in China to the same debate over apartheid in South Africa. Some companies refuse to engage, while others hope to foster change from within.
Wikipedia decided not to go into China because of censorship concerns.
Wales opposed Google’s initial foray into China but said he respected their decision, and similarly supported the search giant’s recent decision to depart again.
Through talks with the Chinese government, Wales has been able to make Wikipedia accessible within China. While Wikipedia can’t stop the government from censoring some of its content, it does not play a cooperative role. “I think that China is beginning to understand that their approach to filter the Internet is no longer tenable and they are changing,” he said.
During the Q&A session following the keynote, Wales said we’ve already seen a glimpse at the possible powers of social media, alluding to the use of Twitter last summer during political protests in Iran.
“I think we’re going to see dictators and tyrants overthrown thanks to tools like Twitter,” he said, cautioning that along with that may come unnecessary panic and misinformation when people don’t take the time to evaluate the information being spread so quickly.
“It’s certainly a look at the future of communication.”
