[Sigia-l] Re: Wiki wiki

[Jon Hanna]

> > 'Emergent' is just a marketing-buzzed-up word for 'fast' -- so, with
> > regards to publishing speed, yes -- but 'intelligence' doesn't come
> > out-of-the-box, and never will.
>
> Emergent means 'coming into view', at least over here in London. I
> think the traditional design communities would agree with you that the
> current usage of the emergent label is distasteful, though it does
> reflect the vast amount of time and effort that has been put into
> open-format or open-source models of information exchange, such as a
> blog or wiki.

Another definition of "emergent" is the property of a system in which large
number of simple parts interact with each other in simple ways and the
aggregate of those interactions results in behaviour of the system as a
whole which is of great complexity and unpredictability. This definition is
used in Chaos theory, AI and in other sciences with varying degrees of
controversy. Arguably one emergent system starts of with a bunch of amino
acids and a few million years into the system running has some parts of the
system complaining about how another part of the system is using the word
"emergent" as a marketing buzz-word.

Wikis and blogs (especially blogs when participants are big into
cross-linking) can result in emergence, or at least something approaching
emergence enough to be useful. It's unfortunate that someone taught the word
to marketers, whenever marketers learn a new word they soon destroy its
usefulness, it's better to just leave them alone and let them prefix e- to
words which we can then ignore. I hope they aren't really using it as a
synonym for "fast", that's a barbarism too far.

The thing about emergent systems is that their unpredictability is a
two-edged sword. There are times when you do want, indeed need, to manage
content and direct its flow and life-cycle.

Where wikis and blogs are good collaboration tools is in seeding ideas, and
bashing them around a bit. The speed with which someone can get something
(anything) into the system and the casualness with which most users do so
quickly throws ideas into a crucible and even the terrible can inspire
brilliance.

This does not make them good tools for documentation, specifications (except
very early drafts), news broadcasting (except "has it happens" bulletins) or
anywhere where there is value in managing the content. It's incorrect I
think to refer to Wikis as "content management" and even more so with blogs.
I tend to think of them as content dismanagement (coining dismanagement
because there's a deliberate move away from managing, as opposed to
mismanagement where you try to manage but fail). Maybe people involved in
blogs and wikis think content management is getting investment or something
and that's why they want to take our clothes. The shame is that not only is
it contributing to the dilution of the term "content management", but it's
also making the value of blogs and wikis less obvious by comparing apples
with oranges and implying that you can't choose to have both.

If a CMS fits into an "architecture" then a wiki or blog fits into an
unmanaged forest. An architect might decide that they want to build an
office next to unmanaged forest but that doesn't make the forest
architecture nor the building organic (sorry this metaphor is getting out of
hand, but I'm in the mood to head down to Knocksink Wood rather than sit
here, and it's interfering with my thoughts).