Weinberger, David. 2008. Everything is miscellaneous: The power of the new digital disorder. New York: Holt. (Amazon)
His Twitter account: twitter.com/dweinberger
In a first few paragraphs David Weinberger introduces a social royalty of the highly hierarchical order – the his/her majesty the Editor. Ultimately editors decide what to put together and how to organize it. What if the editorial throne was given to the commonwealth of the readers. How does that affect the social order? It clusters the users together and creates social groups. Over time the community of groups and individuals will rely on the social knowledge rather than on the expertise of an individual in a “well-lit room” (the editor).
This chapter talks about how a 2,500 year-old system of knowledge demands the fundamental change – the approach from the bottom up, rather then the top heavy rigid second order. Third order of knowledge that exists between us, rather than being inside of our heads. The emergence of a public knowledge from the social groups on a global scale is the new and developing phenomenon.
Social knowledge is an organic system that is able to evolve and improve itself. On the contrary, the rigid encyclopedic system is top heavy and is a set (non-evolving) compilation of information.