Stephen Gall

Bachelor of Science in Business Administration Program
MGMT 3017
Critical Thinking and Decision Making

Walden University

Professor, Jerry Griffin Instructor

January 13, 2007

Introduction

This paper will argue that Wikipedia, the first iteration of a global knowledge base, represents a fundamental new way to create and manage information. When the academic community dismisses Wikipedia as a valid information resource, it is reverting to avoidance behavior, which is a typical reaction when experiencing something that requires a paradigm shift.

Change happens constantly, but revolutionary change often demands a paradigm shift in thinking in order to understand and adapt as times change. This is especially true with technology changes, because technology changes create new ways of experiencing the world, previously unimagined. Consider how the light bulb, the automobile, or airplanes affected life at the beginning of the twentieth century. These types of technology changes had profound impacts which eventually demanded a paradigm shift in thinking about the world. The technology changes we are experiencing at the beginning of the twenty-first century will be even more disruptive and revolutionary in nature and also require new paradigms.

Certainly the Internet (the Web), which suddenly appeared during the late 1990’s has turned-out to be an extremely disruptive, world-changing technology. Like the car, electric light, and other technologies of their time, the potential consequences of the Internet were only perceived by a few people who could grasp the far reaching consequences that were about to occur. These early adaptors were telling us things we didn’t want to hear. For the rest of us, the Internet was viewed as a curiosity, but just as similar previous technologies, we are all now aware of how the Internet is changing our world, demanding a paradigm shift in thinking about all aspects of both business systems, and the personal and social constructs the Internet affects.

Consider how people normally react and adapt to world-changing events. When we finally recognize the discontinuous, disinter-mediating change happening all around us, and finally realize what it might mean to us in real terms, we change our paradigms to match the new reality; this is a natural adoption mechanism. Paradigms allow us to create a working mental abstract of our reality, and these abstractions are vital it we are to adapt to a changing environment.

The need for new Paradigms

For most of human existence, technology changed slowly. In the past, paradigms were only required by inventions such as fire, the wheel, steal, gunpowder, and mechanical systems. The acceleration of technological change, which became dramatic during the 20th century, required the adoption of many new abstract paradigms. Today’s world is undergoing rapid technological change due to the microchip, the Internet and new scientific discoveries, all of which force us to re-examine our view of the world and how we interact with it. And as in the past, technology changes also often create new ways of using the new technology which were previously unimagined, which compounds the problems associated with rapid technological changes.

There are two factors at play today: 1) the number of disruptive changes brought about by all forms of rapidly-changing technologies, combined with 2) the apparent acceleration of the rate of these changes, i.e. change seems to be changing faster and faster. Rapid change is a phenomenon that puts each of us, as individuals, at risk of losing the ability to understand the consequences of the changes happening around us. As a natural response, we become defensive and may refuse to accept the consequences of the technology. We find it comfortable and convenient to hold-on to our current paradigm, or world-view. Why is it important to recognize and adopt to change? A person’s worldview or paradigm determines how successful one is at adapting; it determines if one is going to be left behind on the adoption curve, and lose the ability to cope well with their environment.

This need for new paradigms also affects communities and groups. Perhaps, the biggest risk to communities who continue to apply pre-paradigm criteria and logical constructs to post-paradigm environments are that those in the community fall behind the adoption curve and eventually fall victim to negative coping mechanisms.

The Acceleration of Change

We often think of change as linier, progressive, and even over time. But if change itself is actually accelerating [Smart, 2007], then we are all at risk of experiencing events and technologies we don’t understand by becoming defensive instead of learning to adopt. Is accelerating change real? Authoritative researchers, such as Ray Kurzweil, postulate that change itself is accelerating. Kurzweil’s research [Kurzweil, 2007] has shown that we are beginning to experience a dramatic acceleration in change, where the nature of change itself becomes exponential. If Kurzweil’s theory is true, then we are currently beginning to experience an era of accelerating technological change that is so unprecedented and disruptive that its disinter-mediating consequences will eventually affect even the most progressive of thinkers, among them scientists and those in the academic community.

Although there is no way of predicting the impact of future technological changes, we are already witnessing so many disruptive events, that it is increasingly difficult to keep all these events in context. In fact, for most of us, many technologies have already become too complex to understand, especially in the area of computer science and information technology.

The Changing Internet Paradigm and Web 2.0

In the context of this discussion, the Internet represents the greatest disruptive new technology which demands a paradigm shift in thinking about our world. The Internet has been around just long enough that even late adaptors are finally accepting many of the changes it brings. But the Internet is evolving rapidly, and there are technologies and usage patterns emerging out of the Internet already that are causing yet another disruption in the Internet paradigm, just when people were growing comfortable with it’s current state. Starting in 2005, a new phenomenon called Web 2.0 [O’Reilly, 2005] emerged with many new disruptive aspects; including both technology factors, and usage factors.

Web 2.0 was a term that was coined to describe the dramatic new infrastructure and software changes that were creating an environment quite different from the standard Web model. Web 2.0 was driven by a convergence of technologies including environmental, social, and informational aspects.
Environmental factors included:

• Broadband (high-speed) internet access, which has become ubiquitous
• Wireless connectivity is becoming widely available and commonplace
• Server farms and high-speed routers, coupled with new operating systems are allowing very fast access to huge data sources
• Communication devices (cell phones, PDAs, etc.) are adopting and taking advantage of low-cost TCP/IP
• Google, and other providers, have created a giant search mechanism to find web pages that is virtually free to anyone with Internet access

Other factors were creating big changes in business and social usage of the Web:

• Web page creation tools are providing people and companies the ability to create a Web presence simply and cheaply
• The number of social Websites is expanding rapidly, and software as a service (SaaS) solutions are becoming technically feasible and usable, challenging traditional packaged software
• New low-cost information management tools such as weblogs and wikis have negated the need to use traditional office software solutions
• People are interacting by using Internet portals, and by joining social groups, and making business transactions online
• Companies are moving their IT strategy toward a portal solution (all applications through a Web portal) to gain a strategic advantage
• Users are discovering the ability to communicate in a real-time environment that allows non-co-located participation, which is accelerating new forms of social and business interactions

In many ways, the first iteration of the Internet, ‘Web 1.0,’ was an extension of the previous pre-Web paradigm, whereas Web 2.0 finally demands its own paradigm. How does the Web 2.0 model disrupt the pre-Internet and Web 1.0 models?

Pre-Internet and Web 1.0	Web 2.0
The 8 ½ x 11 ‘page’ is the standard for information presentation (still used today in MS Word documents, PDFs, etc.)	The Web page, which has no limits except screen size.
The ‘book’ is the standard format for delivering very large documents about a subject	The Web topic, which can include an endless amount of links to other topics, including multimedia.
The ‘library’ is the standard place to store and find information	A good search engine allows access to the vast resources of the Internet
Newspapers, and journalists	Weblogs, and user-generated content
Definitive/authoritative source	Wisdom of the crowds
Limited number of communications channels	Endless number of communication channels

Open Systems and Wikis

As part of this environmental and usage revolution, a concurrent paradigm is forming around open systems development and free information sources. In his seminal paper, The Cathedral and the Bazaar [Raymond, 1998], Eric Raymond contrasted the differences in paradigms between closed systems and open systems thinking. One of results of open systems thinking is the wiki, the blog, and the search engine. In combination, these tools have caused a dramatic shift in thinking about how systems and information can be created and used. Over the last 10 years, these concepts have evolved and are undeniably successful. [Weber 2004]

Everyone agrees that wiki’s are far from perfect. [Davies, 2004] In fact, their advocates readily admit that their use comes at a cost; there is a lot of ‘slack in the present system.’ But their advocates also recognize the great potential in their justification, and realize that their growing influence will require thinking differently about information.

• Wiki technology provides the ability to write to the Web in real-time, which changes the way information can be created.
• A wiki combines the ability to leverage real-time communication and information sharing across a global community.
• With so many contributors the volume of information grows quickly and becomes vast in volume and depth.
• And one of the interesting properties of a wiki is that information added to this collective knowledge base has the property of being self-correcting and self-organizing.
• With contributions from so many varied sources, the value proposition of information is quickly moving from closed, controlled environments to open, shared networks, made freely available, and which can be searched and updated in real-time.
• This has made the Web more conversational in nature, as people learn to share and communicate in real time. As this environment evolves, a new trust model is also beginning to emerge.
• The vast community of users is rethinking and redefining what is meant to be a definitive source, or even an authoritative source in a global environment where contributors are not co-located.
• The community is discovering that it can rely on the wisdom from the crowds to determine what can and should be accepted and used. New theories in information technology and information aggregation are emerging.
• Using wiki software, people around the world can create and share their knowledge with projects such as Wikipedia.

Conclusion

Wikipedia is the first iteration of an important new type of global knowledge base [Waldman, 2004], one that has vast and far-reaching consequences, and is part of a greater paradigm shift related to the forces of disintermediation caused by the internet. When the academic community dismisses Wikipedia (out of hand), without understanding its long-term ramifications, it is displaying a clear case of mass avoidance behavior, and, in doing so, the community puts itself at risk of falling-behind.

During the second half of the last decade, the Internet seemed to suddenly emerge It is a technology that is driving a new era in globalization, creating new social networks, transforming communication and media, and disinter-mediate every known business model. We have reached an inflection point, a tipping point, or we are about too, in regards to how we conceptualize and use information and tools related to it. This new paradigm has suddenly come upon us, and how we respond to it will determine, each of us, our ability to find success in almost every endeavor that uses information resources.

Will the academic community be able to accept this new paradigm? Many in the academic community seem stuck in pre-internet information usage paradigms. The evidence is that many in the community cannot accept, explain, or understand the success of global wikis such as Wikipedia, when direct analysis [Terdiman, 2005] confirms its accuracy and influence, nor even begin to understand Web 2.0 technologies, usages, or even terminology.

Therefore, we can explain some of the reaction as classic avoidance behavior, where we first lose the ability to understand the nature of the change, and second, when we don't understand the nature of the change, we become defensive, and try to hold-on to our current paradigms and world-view.


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Bibliography

Smart, John, "Brief History of Intellectual Discussion of Accelerating Change," Accessed Jan. 2007, Acceleration Studies Foundation, http://www.accelerationwatch.com/history_brief.html

Kurzweil, Ray, "The Law of Accelerating Returns," Accessed Jan. 2007, KurzweilAI.net, http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1

O'Reilly, Tim, "What is Web 2.0 - Design Patterns and Business Models for the next Generation of Software, Sept. 2005, O'Reilly,
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html?page=1

Weber, Steven, "The Success of Open Source, Harvard University Press, April 2004, ISBN: 0674012925, http://www.amazon.com/Success-Open-Source-Steven-Weber/dp/0674012925

Raymond, Eric, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," First Monday.org, 1998, http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_3/raymond/

Davies, Jonathan, "Wiki Brainstorming and Problems with Wiki Based Collaboration," Dept. of Computer Science, Univ.of York, 2004, http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~kimble/teaching/students/Jonathan_Davies/wiki_collaboration_and_brainstorming.pdf

Waldman, Simon, "Who Knows?" Guardian Unlimited, Oct. 2004, http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1335892,00.html

Terdiman, Daniel, "Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica," CNet news.com, Dec. 2005, http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5997332.html