A semi-rant based on a session at IL2006
The Scholarship in Chaos! panel never got to where I thought it would go — brainy brawl over things like open access, participatory information architecture, folksonomies, controlled vocabularies, peer review, and the nature of expertise and authority. (I did leave before the very end, so maybe it happened, but the moderator was going for the too-quiet side of respectful discourse, so I doubt it.)
Unknown gatekeepers will always seem arbitrary, that’s the problem. Who is an expert? How do you decide? Which carries more weight with you — a movie review in the New York Times written by a “professional” or a Netflix recommendation? Considering Netflix knows what I’ve watched for the past two years (and how much I loved or hated what I watched) and the NYT knows nothing about me, I’ll go with Netflix.
When we’re not talking about brain surgery, this approach will yield more satisfying results. When the example is brain surgery, things get interesting. Because if I need a brain surgeon to address a rare condition, I want that brain surgeon to be able to access anything ever published about my condition. Things like controlled vocabularies will make it possible for my surgeon to find the information; peer-reviewed publications mean it isn’t quackery; reaching beyond digitized content ensures completeness and you need a human behing with search skills for that. Not to mention I want an actual board-certified brain surgeon.
But maybe there isn’t medical consensus about how to treat my rare condition. In that case, I want to learn about all my alternatives and be an informed participant in treatment decisions. I don’t want to wait for peer-reviewed publication or the end of a study to know about something that might help me. I want actionable information, and I don’t care if it comes with a stamp of authority. I’ll take the wisdom of an educated crowd.
Social software tools are just the next step in questioning authority — authority (expertise with establishment ties) isn’t going to disappear. Sometimes authority is right, sometimes it is out of touch. Social software is a way to put a face on expertise, bring transparency, deepen trust, and expand the pool of experts. Unknown gatekeepers’ days should be numbered.