An estimation of the size of Wikipedia as a printed volume, compared to a human. (source)
Howard Rheingold refers to our new form of mass-scale online collaboration as "self-interest that adds up to more." I believe that most people act out of self-interest, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. The trick is to direct self-interest so that it becomes an interest in the general good. Luckily, people are interested in contributing to Wikipedia, and it is a general good. Like all other tools, we should recognize what Wikipedia is good and bad for, and use it judiciously, but it certainly has its positive uses. At the very least, it's an enormous achievement in sheer size alone.
I'd argue that online collaboration can be incredibly powerful, as stated above, but has yet to prove its worth for certain tasks. Wikipedia is a staggeringly big catalog of knowledge. Despite its inaccuracies, it's incredibly useful, and will likely continue to improve. It's a marvel of modern group work. And as Eric Raymond caught onto, the power of a many-eyed crowd to correct errors and bolster knowledge with its diversity is huge. But most of the contributions to Wikipedia have been an act of blunt force, of keyboard-crunching. Translating knowledge into straightforward language and typing it into a webpage doesn't take much. Wikipedia isn't known for its creative writing. It's an utterly utilitarian piece of work. It's great to be able to look up almost any topic, no matter how obscure, and find a straightforward road map to learning more about that topic. But Wikipedia isn't a staggering work of art. In fact, I'd argue that very few great creative works have come out of online mass collaborative efforts. Consider a film like Star Wars Uncut. It's pretty impressive. And hey, it won an Emmy! But from what I've seen, the finished product doesn't feel like a cohesive, flowing work. It's often disorienting to watch. Art is a deeply personal thing, and it's incredibly difficult to convey creative ideas and feelings. Isn't that what we use art itself for? While there are some incredibly interesting works growing out of online collaboration, there seems to me to be a deficiency in profound, cohesive pieces of art made by a massive scale of individuals. Crowdsourcing may be great for making VH1 home movie shows, but not for art with a singular vision. Videogames and film are often made by large groups of people, but the "crowd" is self-selected, and they are still coordinated and directed by very small groups of people. This is much more difficult to do online with an innumerable, faceless crowd. We face the problem of making the internal process of creativity an external one. I'm not saying crowdsourcing is useless for creative endeavors; just that it's unproven. Perhaps we need to learn to appreciate new, emergent forms of beauty that will evolve from this artistic method, but the medium still seems young.
To me, nothing embodies both the advantages and disadvantages of internet collaboration more than online dating. The concept seems brilliantly effective: give people a more optimal chance to find their perfect match by removing the physical barrier and opening up an enormous selection, where automated pairings can even be generated. On the downside, it turns dating into a numbers game. Everything is now coldly statistical: is this potential partner just the right age? Do they have the right income? How closely matched are their interests? For evidence, consider all of the data skewing that occurs on these sites. It's undoubtedly a successful approach for some people, but others feel it saps the mystery out of courtship. At the very least, it drastically changes the terrain of the dating world.
As the situation in Egypt has demonstrated, online collaboration can be useful for mobilization and conveying information on a large and rapid scale. It's great for rote tasks like categorizing information and creating a giant encyclopedia. And sites like Amazon Mechanical Turk are catching on to its ability to harness grunt work on a large and convenient scale. But for tasks like finding a relationship or producing a creatively unified work of art, it still has hurdles to overcome. As Rheingold says, this is the beginning of a new project. I eagerly await to see mass online collaboration fulfill its promise, but I am skeptical of its ability to do everything.
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