The democratization of knowledge is the acquisition and spread of knowledge amongst the common people, not just privileged elites such as priests and academics.
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History
The printing press was one of the early steps towards the democratization of knowledge.[1] Another early example of this during the Industrial Revolution was the creation of libraries for miners in the villages of Leadhills and Wanlockhead in 1741 and 1756 respectively.[2]
Wikipedia co-founder, Larry Sanger, states in his article[3], that “Professionals are no longer needed for the bare purpose of the mass distribution of information and the shaping of opinion.” Sanger’s article confronts the existence of “common knowledge” and pits it against knowledge that everyone agrees on.
Google Book Search has been pointed to as an example of democratization of knowledge, but Malte Herwig in Der Spiegel raised concerns that the virtual monopoly Google has in the search market, combined with Google's hiding of the details of its search algorithms, could undermine this move towards democratization.[1]
Scientific knowledge
The website eBird has been described as an example of democratization of scientific knowledge, as it enlists amateurs to gather data on biodiversity for use by scientists.[4]
Concerns
Some concerns arise[who?] over the development of democratized knowledge - specifically on the issues of this knowledge being biased and corrupted due to its establishment by non-scholarly sources.[citation needed]
See also
References
- ^ a b Malte Herwig, "Google's Total Library", Spiegel Online International, Mar. 28, 2007.
- ^ Olive Checkland, Philanthropy in Victorian Scotland, p. 138, http://books.google.co.uk/books?lr=&ei=AXCVSsG9DInokASY_8SSBw&id=JUG6AAAAIAAJ
- ^ “Who Says We Know: On the New Politics of Knowledge”
- ^ Geoffrey A. Levin and Melissa H. Cragin, "The Role of Information Science in Gathering Biodiversity and Neuroscience Data", ASIST Bulletin, Oct. 2003.
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