Gaming the Systems
Another interesting point raised at Akahele (The cautious site with the beautiful name) highlights the problem of crowds: the concern for peer-produced data in an environment where some of those peers want to insert malicious, propagandistic or otherwise known-flawed results into a system. But the problem isn’t limited to peer-produced knowledge, and it seems that El Sevier, the publisher everyone loves to hate, is just as happy to game the system in an entirely expert-driven manner. The cynical part of me has always argued that the criticisms of Wikipedia result from a naive vision of knowledge production in traditional spheres, and this seems to back it up, but I think it’s more problematic than that. We seem to be moving into a post-post-modern period where it’s not just the critics who think that meaning and truth are malleable but also the consumers and creators of knowledge. It’s like 1984 but instead of just Big Brother manipulating the facts, imagine if Winston Smith was also manipulating the facts in his own personal life and on common peer resources. The journal industry in academia has been oft-criticized as of late, concurrent with the criticism of academia itself, and I think if we’re not careful we’re going to see the El Seviers and Wikipedias of the world meet in the middle, where only the most mundane of facts are agreed upon and, like modern news agencies, anyone will be able to point to their favored experts (or non-expert encyclopedias) to support whatever malicious intention they have. Doubly worrisome is the effect this must be having on the traditional citizen, who according to Enlightenment theory requires their proper understanding of the world (known as education) to make informed choices in directing the course of their political system.
Nowadays, with ready access to expert and non-expert knowledge that supports every side of every debate, we’re faced with an extremely public social surgery, and all indications are that amputation or leeching will come back in vogue. Whatever your stance on creationism or globalization or climate change or Islam or Tibetan nationalism, you can now find experts, news outlets, journal articles, &c &c to support you. This does not seem to be a sustainable system. But what’s the solution? Will the backlash be a clamoring for a restoration of aristocratic control or a pulsing anarchy of rival ideologies? History tends to describe the latter as too unstable to last for long. I don’t know.
I am having an increasing sense of disillusionment about what information can be trusted any more. If we look at the hundreds billions of dollars doled out by the TARP fund, only to recently learn that nobody really knows what was done with that money, and — more importantly — how the American voter doesn’t seem to even get riled up about this, I feel like throwing up my hands and moving to a Caribbean island and just eke out the rest of my existence on Earth, cut off from the “modern day” information stream.
Or, to put in other words, do you reasonably believe that humanity could send a team of two men (or women) to the moon and return them safely, nowadays? I fear that the project would catastrophically fail, because nobody seems to have the ability to “know” how to do anything right any more. They’re too busy Twittering to keep tabs on parabolic trajectory calculations.
Is this really a new problem? Sure, nowadays it’s easy to find support for your crazy theories, but is that so much worse than what we had in the past?
The Internet is, more than anything, a false solution, not a new problem. Knowledge is not something that can be downloaded into the brain by clicking on a URL. I know it sounds ridiculous when you say it that way, but that seems to be the false promise that is being made.
“Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.” Maybe someone took “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” a bit too seriously. Witness also the similar notion being bandied about that an etched copy of Wikipedia could be discovered by a future society which had lost the ability to think for itself, and this future world could be saved by the possession of this text.
Knowledge can’t be downloaded. To gain knowledge, you have to think.
Shooting people to the moon? Let’s see… in the Dark Ages (pre 1995 or so) I would have shrugged my shoulders. Now I can at least find on der wiki that
“In March 1966, NASA told Congress the “run-out cost” of the Apollo program to put men on the moon would be an estimated $22.718 Billion for the 13-year program which eventually accomplished six successful missions between July 1969 and December 1972.
According to Steve Garber, the NASA History website curator, the final cost of project Apollo was between $20 and $25.4 billion in 1969 dollars (or approximately $135 billion in 2005 dollars).”
and
“From 1964 until 1973, a total of US$6.5 billion was appropriated for the Saturn V, with the maximum being in 1966 with US$1.2 billion. Allowing for inflation this is equivalent to roughly $32-45 billion in 2007 money. This works out at an amortised cost of $2.4-3.5 billion per launch.
One of the main reasons for the cancellation of the Apollo program was the cost. In 1966, NASA received its highest budget of US$4.5 billion, about 0.5 percent of the GDP of the United States at that time.”
and take it from there. 0.5% of today’s US GDP would amount to, uhmmm, about $70 billion. Pre-Meltdown, that was serious money, and some people would actually have thrown a hissy fit about spending it on an elaborate government photo op. Today, it’s small change. Can’t prop up even a single failed bank with $70 billion. Or invade Liechtenstein, that would cost more than that. So, I’d say it’s absolutely doable to reanimate NASA.
Of course, you couldn’t get a Saturn V launch for $3 billion (current dollars) any more:
“The three stages of the Saturn V were developed by various NASA contractors, but following a sequence of mergers and takeovers all of them are now owned by Boeing.”
So, make it 15 years and $300 billion for the final launch. Now the only problem is, you’d need somebody to beat to the moon. The Russians are out of the game for the foreseeable future, leaving only the Chinese. Would they play along? What does our eminent sinologist say?
My expertise is in early China, where the only astronomically related pursuits were the organization of knowledge around the creation of a calendar, which allowed one particular polity to win the “Millet Race” before being overtaken by their more militaristic, no-nonsense neighbors. However, since I’m an expert in *something* I suppose that allows me to sign anti-global-warming petitions and make sweeping claims about all sorts of subjects (Gee, I hope so, otherwise this blog isn’t very strategerical) and so I’d say that Taikonauts on the moon are unlikely, but possible. And if they did happen, I imagine the United States will play up the “symbolic nature of such a gesture” rather than spend the money competing. We’re much better spending our money on less interesting symbolic gestures. Of course, then the Chinese will discover water and massive amounts of some interesting raw material, and boy will we look foolish. The only way to make it as storybook as possible is if the first Taikonaut to step on the moon is a Muslim eunuch.
What does space travel have to do with the original question, anyway? It’s about information and in what sources do we trust?
BTW, did anyone read “True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society”:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470050101?ie=UTF8&tag=slatmaga-20&link_code=as3&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=0470050101
I didn’t, but it sounds like it’s on topic.