"Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism" is an

essay An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal a ...

written by

Jaron Lanier Jaron Zepel Lanier (, born May 3, 1960) is an American computer scientist, visual artist, computer philosophy writer, technologist, futurist, and composer of contemporary classical music. Considered a founder of the field of virtual reality, La ...

, originally published in '' Edge – the third culture''.

Essay

In his online essay, in ''Edge'' magazine in May 2006, Lanier criticized the sometimes-claimed omniscience of collective wisdom (including examples such as the

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

article about himself), describing it as "digital

Maoism Maoism, officially called Mao Zedong Thought by the Chinese Communist Party, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed to realise a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of Chi ...

". He writes "If we start to believe that the Internet itself is an entity that has something to say, we're devaluing those people reating the contentand making ourselves into idiots." His criticism aims at several targets which concern him and are at different levels of abstraction: * any attempt to create one final authoritative bottleneck which channels the knowledge onto society is wrong, regardless whether it is a Wikipedia or any algorithmically created system producing meta information, * sterile style of wiki writing is undesirable because: ** it removes the touch with the real author of original information, it filters the subtlety of his opinions, essential information (for example, the graphical context of original sources) is lost, ** it creates the false sense of authority behind the information, * collective authorship tends to produce or align to mainstream or organizational beliefs, * he worries that collectively created works may be manipulated behind the scene by anonymous groups of editors who bear no visible responsibility, ** and that this kind of activity might create future totalitarian systems as these are basically grounded on misbehaved collectives which oppress individuals. This critique is further explored in an interview with him on

Radio National Radio National, known on-air as RN, is an Australia-wide public service broadcasting radio network run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). From 1947 until 1985, the network was known as ABC Radio 2. History 1937: Predecessors an ...

's ''

The Philosopher's Zone ''The Philosopher's Zone'' is a weekly ABC Radio National radio discussion series exploring philosophical Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, know ...

'', where he is critical of the denatured effect which "removes the scent of people". In December 2006 Lanier followed up his critique of the collective wisdom with an article in ''Edge'' titled "Beware the Online Collective". Lanier writes:

I wonder if some aspect of human nature evolved in the context of competing packs. We might be genetically wired to be vulnerable to the lure of the mob....What's to stop an online mass of anonymous but connected people from suddenly turning into a mean mob, just like masses of people have time and time again in the history of every human culture? It's amazing that details in the design of online software can bring out such varied potentials in human behavior. It's time to think about that power on a moral basis.

Lanier argues that the search for deeper information in any area sooner or later requires that you find information that has been produced by a single person, or a few devoted individuals: "You have to have a chance to sense personality in order for language to have its full meaning." That is, he sees limitations in the utility of an encyclopedia produced by only partially interested third parties as a form of communication.

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*{{cite web, url=http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/showciting?cid=293070, title=Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism, publisher=CiteSeerx; NSF Philosophy essays Essays about culture 2006 works Criticism of Wikipedia