Google Reveals Knol

OK. So Google has recently announced project Knol. It has immediately been compared to Wikipedia, About.com and to a lesser extent Citizendium. Alarms are ringing and pundits are already predicting its demise.

• It's not open enough.
• OMG, their going to make a profit.
• What about collaboration?
• Where are the experts?
• Will knol authors become despondent if some kid's knol is ranked higher than theirs?
• How will we know if a knol is true?
• What if people use naughty words or call somebody a nasty name?
• What if a knol doesn't fit with our groupthink?
• Freedom of speech is a bad thing.
• Why can't I edit and delete ideas I don't agree with?
• What color Barnstars can I get?

This reaction is typical of the "OR" society. No, not the Skull and Bones "Operations Research" used by the military to optimize and coordinate the theater of operation, just the plain old logical "OR". You can watch ABC OR CBS OR NBC. You can read the NY Times OR the Washington Post OR the Philadelphia Inquirer.

It's all about the "AND" people! "OR" is so last century. "AND" is the way. Guess what. I get to post my knol on a topic AND you get to post yours. Sure, they don't agree. In fact, they are mutually exclusive and have no intersection at all... but they BOTH get to exist side by side. The "OR" folks claim to be all about diversity, until your opinion or new idea runs counter to accepted consensus.

Collaboration does NOT always mean we are simply amplifying our power by pushing the wagon together. That type of collaboration too often leads to pushing the wagon into a wall OR worse yet off a cliff.

What if Collaboration meant lots of voices posting equally wacky ideas to solve a problem. Just because some ideas are not practical for this solution, what if the problem changes and our collaborative solution no longer exists? Sure, we can sort through all of the history files to trace all of the edits to see if one of the old ideas in the wacky pile are better. Wouldn't it make more sense to keep all of the ideas on the table?

In the laboratory, erasing data is a mortal sin. You are supposed to cross it out (so you can still read it) and put your correct data close by. The collaborative edit button on Wikipedia is akin to using an eraser to obliterate "obviously" wrong information. Information is temporal. The solution may (will!) change. Solving a problem often changes the problem.

We need MORE projects on the net. Wikipedia AND About.com AND Citizendium AND Knol. In a material society, maybe having four versions would lead to a scarcity of real estate to house the brick and mortar collections of information. Maybe it would contribute to traffic congestion, pollution and CO2 emission if all of the visitors tried to go downtown to all four places at once.

We are evolving into an Information society. Storage space is not scarce. Visiting does not require the movement of material, only energy and information. Bring on more collaborative projects. There's plenty of room, plenty of great ideas, plenty of unheard people, and more then plenty of problems that need to be solved.