Tuesday, May 1, 2018

5/2: The Internet/WWW and the Politics of Knowledge

Class

Essential questions: How is knowledge produced? Whose knowledge is disseminated? Who benefits from this knowledge? What is your place in the knowledge society? 


1. Some Context (work on these with a partner)

A. Consider: Information Society versus Knowledge Society   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_society

B. Consider: The Production of Knowledge    http://camellia.shc.edu/literacy/tablesversion/lessons/lesson1/production.htm

C. Consider: Information Privilege

1. What information resources do you have access to by virtue of your institutional affiliation that others do not?

2. What are the potential effects of this “information divide” for those who find themselves on either side of it? See also, “digital divide”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_divide

3. What are the structures that perpetuate this system, and what can challenge these structures?

4. What responsibilities (if any) do you think are associated with privileged access to information?


2. The Case of Wikipedia
A. an encyclopedia (a tertiary source)
B. a wiki
C. a community
Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge
But what does the Wikipedia community mean by "the sum of all human knowledge?" Let's consider Wikipedia as a rhetorical tool:    https://docs.google.com/document/d/150oQzyeijHgs_BTGYTnQ7QLsAPKjjMU3dKx0QHwOGXA/edit?usp=sharing

Keeping a healthy skepticism in mind, experience the scope of the Wikipedia project:
What did we edit 2015? https://youtu.be/Rm1LKcHD1VE

And its attempt to bridge the digital divide:
Wikipedia Zero  https://youtu.be/ZaZf6h0Pus8


For next class