Video: The Truth According To Wikipedia
Written on April 8, 2008 – 3:38 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
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On Friday April 4, in the afternoon the audience of The Next Web Conference watched the world premiere of the documentary The truth according to Wikipedia from IJsbrand van Veelen.
The video led to heated debate between the maker of the documentary and some of the audience members and even during the party afterwards people where still discussing the video. Tessa Sterkenburg posted a follow-up post here on Sunday which received 17 comments (so far) and even Larry Sanger (from Citizendium), one of the people interviewed in the documentary, pitches in.
Last night it was shown on Dutch television (VPRO Backlight) and a few minutes ago it has been uploaded to YouTube too. This is one video that everyone who has anything to do with the Internet should see. The questions it raises are far from answered so I look forward to your ideas about it in the comments here. Some of the leading questions in the documentary were: Should we let just anyone state his or her opinion or should we leave the publishing of information to the experts? Could the openness of the web be dangerous? Who has the right to establish truth?
But first, the movie:
UPDATE: here is an older 50 minutes documentary from IJsbrand van Veelen which he made in 2006 which gives an in-depth look in the world of Google. Some of the questions addressed here are: “What if all the world’s information would be available and easy to find? What if all the news, all books, all texts, photographs and videos would be collected in one place, and made available, always and everywhere?”.
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
13 Responses to “Video: The Truth According To Wikipedia”
By Catharina on Apr 8, 2008 | Reply
Another question the documentary raises is who should have access to information. Although information on the Internet is far from always accurate, there is also lots of valuable and accurate information and the Internet has the potential of reaching more people than books, libraries or the experts ever will.
I wrote a (dutch) blog post on it here:
http://www.kletskous.com/2008/.....-waarheid/
By Theophidian on Apr 8, 2008 | Reply
If I were to give somebody a fully loaded rolling toolbox with a dangerously wobbling wheel, one of the first things they are going to do is take some tools out of the box and fix the wheel. If they have never fixed a wheel before, they will learn or get somebody else to fix it. People keep saying over and over that the internet is presenting problems that have never existed in society before. This is true. What they seldom say is that the internet also provides exactly the tools needed to fix such problems.
The web has matured into a serious tool for many people. Misinformation and predators exist in any social environment- the more impact the social environment has, by nature, the more self-policing it must become. Nobody will trust their business to something as dangerous and fragile as the alarmists say the internet is. Wikipedia does contain a lot of false information, yes. Name any school that will accept a thesis that only cites a single source, and I then I will start to worry about it. I believe any problems that are caused by giving a nation free access to any desired non-private information could be solved by a nation that has free access to any desired non-private information.
As for the internet breeding isolation, the One Laptop Per Child project has shown again and again that quite the opposite is true.
By Tim Bauer on Apr 15, 2008 | Reply
I posted a set of notes I took watching the documentary above (and summary thoughts) for those interested.
http://timbauer.bauerfive.com/.....dont-know/
By Robert on Apr 26, 2008 | Reply
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