Ted Talk: Yochai Benkler

After Yochai highlighted how wonderful wikipedia was and that people without phds were able to help nasa with almost indistinguishable results, it occurred to me that yes, in theory the processing power of people around the world is better than any one company can pay for, but it is still just in theory. Some things like deciding if a picture is ok is a job that can be handed to a random person and most likely they will be able to come to the proper conclusion, but to get information from wikipedia is something that is still shunned amongst academic institutes. The reason is the credibility. Credibility is something that can ruin a business or even an entire nation. I could go up onto a wikipedia page and change it, then someone else could read it when all I did was make things up. This idea that he proposed at the end of ted talk is occurring, but it won’t completely replace industrialization. While more information is available every day on the internet, you don’t see the school systems collapsing. In fact tuition rises every year. If this “free internet information” were really a threat to business, we would expect to see the opposite, as it would be a substitute good/service.