Government in a Wiki World Part 3

The wiki concept is a part of the larger concept of social networking. Given the astonishing success of Flickr, Wikipedia, Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking platforms, enormous attention is focusing on the potential value of social networking in the business and government arenas. Some argue that because far more talent resides outside an organization than inside it, companies and government agencies should strengthen their performance by tapping into the knowledge and wisdom of non-employees.

While proponents of social networking emphasize that it is a new phenomenon rooted in the growth of the Internet, this is not true. Social networking has been with us for a long time. For example, from its beginnings, science has progressed by having scientists articulate their theories and findings publicly, then having other scientists in the scientific community critique them â€" sometimes savagely! Scientific knowledge gradually accretes through a give-and-take process of exposing ideas to scrutiny, then refining them. The principle is that if a new idea cannot withstand close scrutiny, then it lacks merit and should be discarded. This is the same principle underlying the building of Wikipedia, where a point is articulated then reformulated many times by subsequent generations of contributors. Through this process, weak and frivolous points are winnowed, and strong ones remain.