William over at iSociety posted this last week and it’s been swirling around in my head, but not being that well read or good at philosophical investigation, I’m not getting very far… ‘Ne sutor ultra crepidam’, indeed.

“Recommender systems, reputation systems and blogging networks all demonstrate an American pragmatist approach to truth: most people think x, and the system which consulted them is fair and open, therefore x is true. They suffer from a Pollyanna effect, whereby negative comments play no role; degrees of positive preference determine what’s valid.”

William paints it as an either/or; but our experience is that the play of BBCi search/select-few-human-built taxonomy truth-through-refutation against the googlesphere* / many-anon-humans-decide postivist truth seems to yield a happy solution (for now) – it’s the top-down + bottom-up model we’re shooting for on my current project too.

So here’s the thing: in your opinion, does the googlesphere pollute the taxonomist’s view over time – will it always win? Should we lock all the library scientists in a (luxury) retreat and keep them pure holy fools for our own good??? I really should get round to reading the Surgeon of Crowthorne shouldn’t I.

Or go get some coffee, calm down and shut the hell up.

* Googlesphere [noun]: The post pyra/google blogosphere…