The Unsung Heroes

What really struck me when considering the ideas and potentials of crowd sourcing was Nicholas Carr's article on the amorality of the web. Specifically was the notion that with the rise of Wikipedia, blogging, and the accessibility of crowdsourcing, we have begun to move away from the "professional" and "experts", and begun to celebrate the amateurs out there. The real question then, is whether our newfound capabilities and masses of people are going to bring forth the emergence of new art, ideas, and innovations, or are we merely taking advantage of tools like humans have always do?

Personally, I don't think that anything special will evolve out of our adoption of crowd sourced projects. In reality, everything human civilization has accomplished was done as part of some sort of collective or group. Great physicists discover new formulae for the mysteries of the universe, yet they have always been part of a larger academic circle that reads, studies, and mediates one another. They just all happen to be experts in their field. Do great things come from their collaboration- Of course they do, just as great things like Wikipedia provide us with quick access to massive amounts of information, or how the blogging world has given mainstream media a reason to sweat through providing instant, personal reactions and reviews on everything that goes on in the world. The only thing missing with any of these is whether it is completely revolutionary, or are just collective realization of the capabilities of our tools and how to use them effectively. I would argue the latter. Just because more people can publish and have the capability to be "heard", doesn't mean those before them haven't had the same thoughts, feelings, and shortcomings.