Beth Simone Noveck, Director of the Peer to Patent Project, has written an article on Wiki Government for Democracy Journal.
She opens with that line above above, from George Bernard Shaw. It's powerful, and it was said all the way back in 19111. Now that's not saying that professions are inherently bad, or that they shouldn't exist. It's really suggesting that lay people have just as much to offer as experts.
Experts don't necessarily know more - they're perceived to know more. What wikis and blogs have demonstrated is that a lot of people who aren't recognized as experts have an immense amount of knowledge to offer. It's true in business, and it's true in government policy making too.
Wikis give governments a platform to engage these people in developing better policies:
In each case, we are beginning to see how, if designed with (emphasis mine) clear, simple tasks to that help create more open and collaborative yet organized practices, the computer screen can shift power from professional sources of authoritative knowledge to new kinds of knowledge networks. Speaking truth to power is easiest to do-and more accurate-when spoken not as an individual, but as a group.
This is the kind of clear, level-headed approach to wiki use that should be taken seriously. She knows what she's talking about too - as Howard Rheingold says:
She's not just a theorist. Her "peer to patent" project might well succeed in applying collective intelligence to fixing our broken patent system.
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