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| Andrew Orlowski | |
|---|---|
 Orlowski at a going-away party in San Francisco. |
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| Born | 1966 |
| Occupation | Columnist for online IT newspaper The Register. |
| Website Andrew Orlowski |
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Andrew Orlowski (born 1966) is a British columnist for the online IT newspaper The Register.
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Early career
In 1992, Orlowski started an alternative newspaper in Manchester, England called Badpress.[1] He has also written for Private Eye magazine.[2] In the late 1990s, he worked at Dennis Publishing, on the magazine PC Pro, and at Ziff Davis UK.[citation needed]
The Register
Orlowski became a columnist based in San Francisco, U.S. for The Register in 2000.[citation needed]
In April 2003, he coined the term googlewashing to describe the potential for well-linked weblogs to obscure the original meaning of a controversial expression (e.g., "the Second Superpower").[3]
Orlowski later classified this[4] along with "absurd intellectual property claims" as an example of an unwarranted assumption of power or authority to gain sociological advantage on behalf of a particular lobby group. This factor is the core of what makes a story "great", he argues.[citation needed]
In December 2004, he was invited to assemble a panel on techno-utopianism at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.[5] Orlowski argues that this form of utopianism distracts attention and diverts capital away from solving real infrastructure problems.[6] "Technology can help us," he writes on his FAQ page.[4] "But we venerate the machines we have, which aren't very good, and worse, limit ourselves to seeing the world through this machine metaphor. Technology is useful when it makes something we already like to do easier. Technology can't tell us something we don't know. Technology cannot solve problems that don't exist."[citation needed]
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Criticism of Wikipedia
See also Criticism of Wikipedia.
After making passing references since Wikipedia was announced in 2001, Orlowski first criticized Wikipedia in The Register in mid-2004,[7] and what began as incidental mockery — often involving responses to reader's emails and characterised by his coinage of the neologism wiki-fiddler[8] — soon became a regular subject of his journalism. To Orlowski, Wikipedia is "a hobby, a multiplayer game and a repository for fan trivia"[9] with the accuracy of articles varying "from the occasionally passable to the frequently risible, while its all-important readability is even worse — and deteriorating."
By December 2005, several such articles were being published each week, with subject matter including the characterisation of Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales as a petty hypocrite and pornographer[10] and average Wikipedians as rebellious children ("He's 14, he's got acne, he's got a lot of problems with authority ... and he's got an encyclopedia on dar interweb."[11]), as well as a spoof article which announced that Wales had been shot.[12]
Orlowski's comments indicate he believes Wikipedia is undergoverned (and thus of poor quality and morally hazardous[9]) and unnecessary (in that "expensive databases" of information will become publicly accessible in the near future — "The good stuff will just come out of a computer network"[11] — and well-capitalised enterprises will provide "much more attractive" alternatives[13]). In April 2006, Orlowski expanded on these themes in an article for The Guardian,[14] in which he was the first journalist to draw attention to a then-new web site, Wikitruth, critical of Wikipedia.
Criticism of anthropogenic climate change
Orlowski has produced numerous articles that aim to cast doubt over anthropogenic climate change, or global warming.[15] His articles often favour non-scientific pundits over the expert scientific community, for example his defence of Christopher Monckton against the American Physical Society.[16]
Criticism of Peer-to-peer
Orlowski has also produced a number of articles since late 2007 that has cast aspersions on peer to peer services, regardless of copyright infringing status.[citation needed] He has affectionately dubbed users of such services 'freetards'[17]. These articles are also rare for The Register in that they do not feature a comments section.[citation needed]
References
- ^ Andrew Orlowski, Badpress: Manchester 1992-93 contents, Badpress
- ^ Internet Porn: "Government report suppressed", PR Newswire, 6 September 1996
- ^ Andrew Orlowski, Anti-war slogan coined, repurposed and Googlewashed… in 42 days, The Register, 3 April 2003
- ^ a b Andrew Orlowski's FAQ
- ^ Mistakes Techno Utopians Make: Fantasy Politics and the Disappearing Social December 2004
- ^ Andrew Orlowski, Six Things you need to know about Bubble 2.0, The Register, 7 October 2005
- ^ Andrew Orlowski, "Buckminster Fuller on stamp duty", The Register, July 14, 2004
- ^ Andrew Orlowski, "Wiki-fiddlers defend Clever Big Book", The Register, July 23, 2004
- ^ a b Andrew Orlowski, "Wikipedia science 31% more cronky than Britannica's", The Register, December 16, 2005
- ^ Andrew Orlowski, "Who owns your Wikipedia bio?", The Register, December 6, 2005
- ^ a b Andrew Orlowski, "There's no Wikipedia entry for 'moral responsibility'", The Register, 12 December 2005
- ^ Andrew Orlowski, "Wikipedia founder 'shot by friend of Siegenthaler'", The Register, December 17, 2005
- ^ Andrew Orlowski, "$10m for a Wikipedia for grown-ups", The Register, December 19, 2005
- ^ Andrew Orlowski (2006-04-13). "A thirst for knowledge". The Guardian. http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1752257,00.html. Retrieved 2006-04-17.
- ^ Andrew Orlowski, "search for Orlowski+climate", The Register
- ^ Andrew Orlowski, "American physicists warned not to debate global warming", The Register, July 21, 2008
- ^ Andrew Orlowski, "BBC tech chief: You Freetards don't matter", The Register, November 6, 2007
External links
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