Reading Response
The idea of the Internet being a way to harness our collective IQ is incredible, and has been discussed in varying ways for a long period of time. I’ve often heard a similar principle described as the ability to harness the collective knowledge of humanity on an iphone. But the author argues that ultimately that quantity of information lacks meaning without quality interactions. It doesn’t really matter if information exists unless you are able to successfully find and access it. She takes this argument further by positing that we should be able to preview and skim this information more effectively. Essentially by improving Internet navigation and document interaction, information can be absorbed more efficiently. This can ultimately open up the Internet in order to bring more quality interaction to the masses, which can help successfully realize the goal of leveraging our collective IQ. This sort of democratization immediately made me think of Wikipedia, which allows users to contribute their knowledge and expertise to a larger whole, while easily allowing readers to jump to related articles. The author specifically mentioned Hypothesis as a successful tool for tagging documents for better efficiency and allowing for group annotations (which is certainly another reason to encourage us to take advantage of Hypothesis). Read More
