Vibewire 5: From 'Bad' to 'Good' Elitism?

Another quick rumination in response to the Vibewire e-Festival of Ideas discussions. This connects very directly to my research for my latest book Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage - chapters 5 through 8, on Wikipedia, folksonomies, and related issues around knowledge management and knowledge organisation, all deal in some detail with the question of how to come to an arrangement between 'folks' and 'experts' which both respects expert knowledge and asserts the equipotentiality of contributors who are not certified experts. Here's what I wrote on that point - comments welcome!

It's interesting that the question of experts is coming up here - it's something I've thought a lot about recently, especially also in relation to the Wikipedia where that problem has been a point of ongoing discussion. There are plenty of good arguments in either direction here (let experts have far greater say than average people vs. follow the common-sense consensus of everyone) - personally, my preference would be for a middle way which respects expert knowledge but also doesn't accept it unquestioningly just because someone has a degree and a position of authority.

Elitism always gets a bad name, but in itself elitism isn't bad if it means that those with the greatest knowledge and wisdom have the greatest influence on policy decisions - but at the same time, to avoid the downside of elitism (where influence is determined not by knowledge and wisdom but by power and money), those decisions must be verified and validated by all of us, democratically. Maybe that is what can happen through e-participation: a shift from the 'bad' elitism of the late 20th century to a 'good' elitism held in check by hyperintelligence?

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