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thuswise to swerve

Legislating with a wiki

Submitted by Jim Brown on February 24, 2008 - 4:14pm.

Colarado State Senator Chris Romer has started a wiki tap voters for ideas regarding congestion on Interstate 70. Romer's Google groups wiki has drawn a wide range of responses from "I Hate All of These Ideas, Want to Hit Senator Romer Over the Head with a Ski Pole" to a page about carpooling.

This kind of wiki is an interesting idea, but I wonder who exactly is contributing to this discussion. Considering the whitewashing that happens on Wikipedia, Romer will have to be careful regarding the assumptions he makes about contributors. It would be easy for an astroturf movement (one backed by corporate interests that would benefit from certain I-70 solutions) to begin to dominate this discussion. Wikis are great, but they're not inherently democratic. The anonymity of a wiki opens up the discussion (and, to me, this is a good thing), but it also means we have to view the text and authorship differently.

Link via Denver Business Journal

"The atoms, as their own weight bears them down plumb through the void, at scarce determined times, in scarce determined places, from their course decline a little- call it, so to speak, mere changed trend. For were it not their wont thuswise to swerve, down would they fall, each one, like drops of rain, through the unbottomed void; and then collisions ne'er could be nor blows among the primal elements; and thus nature would never have created aught."

-Lucretius, Of The Nature of Things

About Me

My name is Jim Brown and I'm a Ph.D. Candidate in Rhetoric at the University of Texas. I teach courses in Rhetoric, Literature, and New Media. This blog mostly focuses on my academic work, but you'll also find occasional posts about music or baseball. I also maintain two other blogs, and you can see all of my blog writings by viewing this RSS feed. I'm a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. This lets you know that I'm kind of a masochist and explains the name of my dog.

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