Subscribe Feed (RSS)Two great multi-language collaborative works
January 2nd, 2007 by Richard K Miller | Filed under Mormon, Revelation.If you're new here, read more about the More Good Foundation. We help members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon church) share their beliefs on the Internet. Learn more about what Mormons believe or talk with Mormons at LDS.net.
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.
[...] vision of “harnessing collective intelligence” and stated that it may not always be ideal. Presumably, the more that people connect with each other and collaborate on the Internet, the [...]