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The first: “And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven…” (Genesis 11:4).
The second: “Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia project.” (Wikipedia)
What do they have in common?
Tim O’Reilly says that Wikipedia and other “web 2.0″ websites are about “harnessing collective intelligence”. That is, working together to build something.
For Wikipedia it has worked pretty well. Mitch Kapor said a study of several science articles in Wikipedia and Brittanica showed that Brittanica had as many mistakes as Wikipedia. Impressive for a free encyclopedia written by volunteers! And the Wikipedia articles were corrected immediately.
But what if all this “collective intelligence” is building (or writing or teaching) the wrong thing? How will we know?
If you believe the Bible, then you believe that God speaks to prophets and the prophets teach us.
The collective intelligence of humanity is pretty good, but prophecy, seership, and revelation are better.
