How could Venkman even try to comply? Ghostbusters (1984)

To get a licence to store 'hazardous materials' (captured ghosts, etc.) on their commercial premises in that zone, they'd need to appease inspection officers that their containment methods were secure and posed no danger.

Thus, they'd need to prove to the inspectors that their technique was suitable to the task and in doing so they'd have to reveal the secrets behind their proprietary technology.

How could they, or indeed any new company with novel scientific methods, prove to others' satisfaction about the safety mechanisms, without breaching confidentiality that protects their intellectual property - the specifics of the system, etc.?

There may be some analogous mechanisms, the proven success of which could be used to argue that their new technology was similarly safe.

Maybe inspectors need to swear to secrecy, keep their documents under lock and key... Or maybe innovation has to be circumspect, ready to be investigated by outside parties.

Stop being negative: you are harming economic recovery!

Foucault states that power can be discursive in both content and execution. The power of speaking about something, gives that thing power (just as the academe allow certain new permitted  knowledges to become accepted within their discipline). Which is why talking down the economy near a recession should be illegal – scaremongering just makes people jittery, risk averse and thus they keep their money ‘safe’ at home or in the bank – they don’t speculate, spend on new projects or plan new expenditures – they want to ride out the storm intact. Yet this conservativeness is the death knell to finance-based economies such as the UK. If you do not have money flow the economy will fall apart. If you don’t spend, then manufacturers and service-providers wont produce, then they wont buy materials, hire labour or pay taxes, the government will have insufficient funds to support the unemployed as well as meet their other obligations – safety, health, etc.

We didn't win WWI and WWII by being down-at-the-mouth depressed - we were positive, confident and brave - even if this bravura was created through propaganda films and encouraging posters.

Apps - the low-down in infographic form!

This is beyond awesome!

Music opportunity

If promised commercial success if you sign away some/all control over creative direction and your earnings, would you accept a record deal if you wanted your music 'out there'? Or would you hold off because you want to think back in retirement about how it was all from your hard graft, the glory being all your making, or that your output might have had a small audience, but at least it was authentic and true to you? Does Lady Gaga and her House of Ga (for her designs, clothes, etc.) deserve critical success if we learn that her direction is influenced by a money-funder? Just because someone takes the opportunity to get one's music more widely known, rather than languishing in the recesses of MySpace, does that make them a sell-out or realistic that music is (partly) about marketing?

Web 2.0

The consumers of information and entertainment on the internet are becoming the creators. Dilbert mash-ups. Vimeo movie reviews. Youtube fan clips. Wikipedia entry edits.

We are creating our world. We might be producing information that no-one else is consuming. We might be making more than we are taking in. Our output might be outpacing our input. Does that matter? If we are not informed before we produce, we have the pleasure in knowing our work is naively original - we cannot possibly have copied or been influenced - we haven't seen the other output.

But to what extent is our perhaps ill-informed produce worth anything? Can it be called truth?

When information is modified in Wikipedia it is either changed automatically or on flagged pages there is a pause, a debate between self-nominated experts, a professional over-seer moderates and then we have alterations (if permitted). There is a checking system and it works - mostly. We are not by nature a society of liars. We do not want to produce inaccuracies (other than when we are compelled for commercial or personal reasons). We like to have contributed to helping improve global understanding. We want to have been pivotal in making something better. We want to be seen as knowledgeable, clever. We want to show off.

That is why I think there is just cause to believe in Wikipedia. Eventually we will use it as a resource and cite it. GoogleNews was planning on doing just this and conducted an experiment into its efficacy. In another article it is stated that:
"it’s hard to argue with the idea that many Wikipedia pages — which are often more comprehensive and updated more quickly than some news sites — offer background and context on current events that could be beneficial to Google News users."

This is probably the main point. With citizen journalists on the spot and giving us a street view of incidents, we can be there immediately. We can judge for ourselves. There is no editor, script writer, teleprompter reader. We can see for ourselves.

Academia's main bugbear is that it takes two years to review then publish scholarship. The information may well be old, based on outdated research and outmoded data. The purpose of publishing is thusly not for the benefit of Mankind to improve knowledge, but to add to someone's CV/resume, to make them closer to tenure. If we have a moral obligation to make our research available to everyone, then we should be publishing in Wikipedia or on our blogs. We might need to sell journals and books, but we might care more about letting humanity know a little bit more sooner rather than later.

Maybe information overload would be a problem. Putting all the research out there, for magazines to paraphrase in brief articles, where nuances are lost and inaccuracies flourish, might be pointless. The white noise wall of information may become too much and deter people from engaging or even listening. Perhaps after a serious debate in conference tracks, journal counterarguments and rival books, there might be a more solid argument produced, a more refined, joint understanding. This might be what should be fed down to the general populace. The average Joe doesn't want to have to grasp ten years of chemistry teaching to know that the new pharmaceutical might help his condition, as long as he avoids caffeine and doesn't have the trigger gene.

Are we protecting the public from being overwhelmed with information, or are we creating knowledge strata? Limiting those deliberately to make the information seem more valuable; information that is released only in the rarefied air expelled by other scholars.

Should we trust information produced by multiple persons working without financial gain (unless they are promoting a theory that one can learn more about in a handy pocket-sized classic available for only £5.99!) and viewable to the multitude who can join in as editors if so moved, or allow the information to remain unchallenged if they believe/know it to be fact?

Here is a site that talks about a documentary that was made on this very topic - it includes an embedded version of the documentary. Well worth watching!

Update: I have just found this on Claire O'Farrell's blog: "Scholarly work is essential in order to guarantee certain standards of truth and accuracy, of value to the social body. But popular books are also essential to communicate ideas to a non-specialist general public...A book does not stand alone, it is intrinsically bound up in a social network of work done by others." Interesting...
Also, there is this academic article that explores the issue of trust in Wikipedia contributions.
Ian Bogost thinks that academic output should be for the general public:

"But wait, you might say, why would a discipline of philosophy need or want to explain itself to a general population? This is the domain of specialists, and some will hold that we cannot or should not "simplify" our nuanced positions for the unwashed masses. This is wrongheaded. I'm of the general belief that academia has a responsibility to the public interest, but more than any other philosophical movememt in recent memory, OOO stands to benefit from the deep engagement of ordinary people, since it returns the attention of philosophy to the real, everyday world."

Corporate greatness

A new survey by the Hays Group has released results indicating that UK and US, along with France and Germany have the most admired corporations in the world, along with the worst in USA. See the infographic here.