The Internet has become not just a collective knowledge
base, but also a collective base for jokes, idioms and general human
observation interactions. I am referring to the explosion of the usage and
popularity of the meme. The meme has become a tool to point out an observation
to everyone around him or her. These observations can be anything from the
general lateness of a bus at a college bus stop or an observation of the
tendencies of a prominent political figure. These memes have opened a doorway
to a more casual Internet usage and a feeling of closeness with people with
whom you encounter on the Internet. This closeness resides in the fact that memes
provide a common ground of perspective and hilarity between people. This recent
development has opened an avenue for people to converse and build a knowledge base
concerning topics that really do not matter in the scope of everyday life, but
may provide a mutual interest. An example of this is crow sourcing. This name
is a play on words from crowd sourcing, this site has people exploring and
inventing idioms based on common animals. The content of this site is not the
most important part of its existence despite exploring a topic that is not
usually explored. The important idea is that people are coming together to build
knowledge bases (crowd sourcing) about any topic even if it is very extract.
The idea of collaboration is important in the fact that knowledge bases can be
expanded quickly and include large amounts of information without bias, but
also because this this idea is likely to spread to scholarly ideas and really
any type of work. This is exciting because the volume and accuracy of works
will increase. As this idea evolves many problems arise however. Who moderates
to make sure that the information is accurate and genuine? This problem has
already arisen with wikis. Who should have the power to edit and add
information? Will collaborative works ever become possible let alone popular if
these problems cannot be solved?
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