Wiki Wednesday: Communication Tools

Yesterday, I talked with my friend Brad the Philosopher via Skype. To a large degree, it felt like he was at the table with us, drinking Starbucks and hanging out. The delay was minimal and the picture quality was crystal clear. Yet, it was all an illusion; a string of ones and zeroes floating in an abstract network of cyberspace. It was a shaky moment where I lost touch of the terrestrial reality of geography.

For that reason, today's wiki has to do with online communication. I'd like to have a discussion about the pros and cons of using things like instant message, Skype, Twitter and other devices to communicate online.

The only problem is that the wiki concept wasn't working out as well as I had hoped. I envisioned it as a day when people would edit a wiki and add practical ideas to some sort of general brainstorm. I hoped for some type of a collective knowledge that could benefit everyone. I'm realizing now that it was idealistic.

Wiki Wendesday failed for two reasons. First, pbwiki has made it difficult for people to edit my wiki. It's a general trend I notice everywhere. The internet was anarchy. Web 2.0 was a shift into democracy (with the wiki being the ultimate example of self-regulation) but now we are scratching our heads and saying, "The Articles of Confederation aren't working. We need federalism." So, we have codes people type just to leave comments and anti-spam software and e-mail verification for everything all in a constant internet war on terror.

Here's the new idea: you can either comment on the wiki or edit the wiki and in the end, I'll take the comments and edit the wiki myself. You can find today's wiki at Communication Tools. If you want to edit the wiki, I am more than happy to add you to the account. I just haven't figured out how to let anyone edit it.