Hey everyone, team KeySmash here. Thanks for your participation last class! You really helped us have an interesting and productive discussion.

 

As a follow-up, per Professor Russworm’s instructions, here’s a slightly refocused version of our second critical question. This was the original:

 

Do you think the “Human Knowledge Project” will be as successful as Vaidhyanathan claims? Will the public sphere be more responsible than Google, or will the two initiatives have two separate functions?

 

Our answers to this question tended to focus on the dubious viability of the Human Knowledge Project, and the likelihood that the status quo set by Google will be maintained. But as we try to imagine solutions to the problems of the information age, we want to move beyond this simple comparison, especially when Google and the Human Knowledge Project might be prone to a lot of the same failings. So…

 

What do we want/need from an alternative like the Human Knowledge Project that we don’t get from Google?

 

Let’s be as specific as we can!

 

See everyone next class,

 

-KeySmash

 

Update: Speaking of solutions, we found an article on Reddit about and opensource, crowd-sourced alternative to Google Maps. This is the sight: OpenStreetMap, and this is the article: The rise of OpenStreetMap: A quest to conquer Google’s mapping empire. For summary’s sake, here’s a quote pulled from the article, by the founder of the project, Steve Coast:

“Have others tried their hand at crowd-sourcing map data as well? Absolutely. Waze and Google – or, just Google now – provide similar mechanisms to improve their maps, based mostly on OSM’s innovations. With one big catch. It is very much their map. Not yours. (Just ask the developers who pay a lot of money to use it.) OpenStreetMap is different. All of the quality data contributed is openly available – just like Wikipedia. So, anyone can download, experiment and play with it freely. It’s not locked up beyond your reach.”

So, have you heard of the project or used the sight? Having learned about it, would you use it over Google Maps, and could it be a model for alternatives to other Google services?

Works Cited:

Sawyers, Paul. “The Rise of OpenStreetMap: A Quest to Conquer Google’s Mapping Empire.” TNW Network All Stories RSS. The Next Web, 28 Feb. 2014. Web. 03 Mar. 2014.