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The lively pluralist vs the expert solipsist.

"…I learned more and I learned faster by listening to the voices of the quilters on eBay. I got trained in the features to look for, what quilters consider boast worthy, and what other bidders thought was worth plunking their money down for. This was unsytematic and uncertified knowledge, but because it came wrapped in a human voice, it was richer and in some ways more reliable: the lively plurality of voices can and should outweigh the stentorian voice of experts."

David Weinberger - Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web.


Compared to Andrew Keen's book The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy David Weinberger's is far better considered and reasonable. If you have even a passing interest in how the Internet is shaping your life (whether you know it or not) I recommend it to you.

Unlike the pesimistic view of the The Cult, Small Pieces has more positive scope:

"…although we don't know what the web will look like as it develops, we have solid grounds for optimism. Hope is warranted. We should give into it."

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