Entry #Two: The Words Continue

Jimmy Wales: The birth of Wikipedia 

Interesting to see the "origin story," as I would state it, of the great empire. I believe that Wiki does have more than one employee now....checks wiki, yes they do. I can't imagine how wiki could continue on with their ever expanding universe with just a single employee. Which brings me to the question of how can they find so many volunteers. Does the world really have thousands of people who like to edit a Encyclopedia for free? The answer to that question is complicated. What I think is, that there are thousands of people who are not only enticed by the thrill of editing articles, but also are drawn to the opportunity to provide free knowledge to all. To be that superhero teacher helping knowledge seekers and to contribute to a project who's world impact is very much understated.  As for the issue brought up near the end, wiki has not gained a good academic standing (in my personal experience) in the academic community. Heck, my advanced research logistics english professor (say that 10 times fast) spent the entire course telling us how horrible wiki is for any and all information. The way I see it, wiki is a good place for quick non-academic answers and a good place to start for academic answers. They are also masters at the craft of crowdsourcing volunteers.

Tiffany Shlain - From Failure to Innovation

It's hard for me imagine a world without internet. The year Tiffany "discovered" the internet I was born, hardwired for the new century. I share a lot with Tiffany's filmmaking beginnings. I too started as a young film enthusiast that reediting existing content to create my own content. Of course instead of old films, I used youtube videos which gave me a larger web of resources. What I take from Tiffany's talk/film is that in order to be a filmmaker you don't actually need to "make" the film. You create a concept, a notion, a abstraction, a conception and then the film that follows is simply a directed display of that concept. Easier said than done, yes, but the idea of vast community coordination to express one or many ideas is astounding.

This has nothing to do with anything.