Google Co-Op: The End of Wikipedia?

Did Google get the idea of using [subject matter] experts to structure [and give meaning to] information for improved findability from the Wikipedia 3.0 article? or as a pure and natural evolution of their thinking? or both?

In case you’re taking it literally, both the question and the title of the post are purely rhetorical at this point, now that Google seems to be on its way to adopting (or co-opting) the Web 3.0 vision.

Here is an excerpt from the newly announced Google Co-Op experiment:

Google Co-op gives you a way to improve search in the topics you know best. If you’re a doctor, for instance, with specific expertise in a particular disease, you can contribute by using the labels in the health topic to annotate all the webpages that you know provide useful, reliable information about that disease. Your patients and other Google users could then subscribe to you and benefit from your expertise.

You can participate in a number of topics that are already being worked on, such as health, destination guides, autos, computer & video games, photo & video equipment, and stereo & home theater. Or, if you’re passionate about something entirely different, go ahead and start a topic of your own. In this guide, we will walk you through an example of how to label webpages for an existing topic as well as how to create a topic of your own.

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Google Co-Op has the potential in the future to follow the vision articulated in the Wikipedia 3.0 article as Google adds Web 3.0 capabilities to its search engine.

Update

1. Google Tries Again to Co-opt the Wikipedia 3.0 Vision

Related

1. Wikipedia 3.0: The End of Google?

Sources

1. Web 2.0 or Web 3.0?

Tags:

Semantic Web, Web strandards, Trends, OWL, innovation, Startup, Evolution, Google, GData, inference, inference engine, AI, ontology, Semanticweb, Web 2.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Web 3.0, Google Base, artificial intelligence, AI, Wikipedia, Wikipedia 3.0, collective consciousness, Ontoworld, Wikipedia AI, Info Agent, Semantic MediaWiki, DBin, P2P 3.0, P2P AI, P2P Semantic Web inference Engine, Global Brain, semantic blog, intelligent findability, Google Co-Op

Wisdom Addition Machine – Updated

Updated on November 12, 2008

This is a reblogging of my email response on September 3, 2006 to Michel Bauwens, founder of The Foundation for P2P Alternatives, and other participants in the dialog.

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The statement from Michel’s interview that captures the difference in our thinking is:

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Michel stated:

“The difference today, of course, is that we are no longer waiting for great leaders, since it is the collective intelligence of humankind that needs to rise to the level of its global challenges.”
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While I agree with the ideal, I don’t see how we can ignore the fact that the crowd will always be less intelligent and less capable than its most intelligent and capable member.

I don’t yet see the conceptual scheme that would allow the individual wisdom of individuals in a crowd to be added up or multiplied rather than replaced with averaged judgment (not wisdom) or the lowest common denominator opinion.

Unless we can come up with a wisdom addition machine we still need to rely on individuals whose intellect, wisdom, taste, and ability exceed that of the crowd (i.e. exceed the average.) to lead the crowd.

The question is can wisdom be calculated? My answer is no, and the same goes for beauty, trust, friendship, love, goodness and all such concepts.

Related

1. The Unwisdom of Crowds

Tags:

Trends, wisdom of crowds, mass psychology, cult psychology, Web 2.0, Web 2.0, digg, censorship, democracy, P2P, P2P 2.0, social bookmarking

P2P DNS for Firefox

In general, you can take any database-centric system and produce its disruptive counter-part using P2P technology.

If browsers like Firefox were to implement a P2P DNS plugin then who needs Verisign (Or GoDaddy for that matter) !?

If someone was to write a Firefox extension that sets up a P2P DNS system wherein each browser would map the topologically close set of IPv4/IPv6 addressses to a set of domain names and where each Firefox DNS extension can query all other Firefox DNS extensions running in the network, with milisecond latency, then, in theory, we could have a P2P domain name system (P2P DNS) that removes our dependency on the government controlled 13-server central DNS tree.

Obviously, the trick here is in having a scalable P2P database technology where each node in the network can resolve a domain name to an IP address by virtually (not physically) querying all other nodes in the network (until the query resolves) within seconds on first attempt and miliseconds on subsequent attempts. I believe that this technology either already exists or that the latest, greatest innovations in P2P database technology may be used to implement it. If not, then it’s just a matter of time before such disruptive technology emerges.

Such P2P DNS would apply to email, too, as long as it’s done from the browser (or by having such P2P DNS service loaded by the OS.)

Tags:

DNS, P2P, Verisign, Firefox, Firefox Extension, P2P DNS