8.23.2007

Changing the world

I've been doing some reading on the legitimacy and trust in user generated content(UGC). Interesting dynamics going on... UGC is often given more weight in the mind of people, but there is also a trepidation on many's part to take UGC at face value because of the inherent bias attached to it. There's also lots of talk about the influence UGC has over, well, basically everything now.

Which led me to my thought for the day... I was recently in a conversation where the topic of Wikipedia and its legitimacy was in question. Given the nature of the origin of the information, were people inadvertently taking inaccurate information that they read on the site as truth? Yes.

But. If enough people write the same "wrong" information. And enough people begin to believe it, what power that contains! I think this social phenomenon may have the power to alter reality for the masses, even if it doesn't mean too. If enough people see the word "red" and is told it is blue, doesn't eventually that word become the identifier for that color? Perhaps it is a stretch, but the influence this new world affords can be a bit scary. And oh so exciting!