Features Podcasts Family Video Comics Music Tech Science Books Film & TV Games ✚

Jill

Blog future vs NYT future: none of the above!

Cory Doctorow at 1:02 am Fri, Dec 21, 2007

— FEATURED —

Book Review

The Man Who Laughs: grotesque Victor Hugo potboiler was the basis for The Joker

Feature

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

Book Review

The Twelve-Fingered Boy - mesmerizing YA horror novel

— FOLLOW US —

Boing Boing is on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our RSS feed or daily email.

 

— POLICIES —

Except where indicated, Boing Boing is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution

 

— FONTS —

Tweet
Kindle
Five years ago, Dave Winer made a "long bet" with New York Times executive Martin Nisenholtz: "In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times' Web site."

Five years later, Rogers Cadenhead has done the math and concludes that blogs are edging out the Times (but that other mainstream media outlets are beating both of them -- thanks to the NYT having squandered the golden years of cheap googlejuice acquisition by erecting a registration and paywall on their content, causing them to fall behind less well-known, but more readily linked news-sources).

Most interesting of all is that Wikipedia (only a year old in 2002) is clobbering both of them -- more proof that the future is weirder than we can know. In 2002, it seemed like the two choices were "amateurs you trust" or "unbiased, accurate, and coherent" information from an "authoritative source." In reality, the third, unforeseen choice was "a horde of nameless, faceless amateurs who are not required to prove expertise in the subjects they cover."

Whenever someone asks you which of two futures you think is more likely, your best bet is always "none of the above." Link (via Kottke)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE:  Happy Mutants • Make a Difference • Maverick Spirit • Think Big

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

  • Practical Archivist

    Actually ::adjusts library nerd glasses:: what sets apart Wikipedia is that every entry is a summary. That’s the whole point of encyclopedias, doncha know. NYT articles and blog entries aren’t really designed to do that.

    Plus it’s not (just) about authority and trust…

    Searchers don’t want certainty, they just want to reduce their uncertainty. I learned that in Library School. In 1994.

  • jphilby

    a horde of nameless, faceless amateurs

    Yes! damn those little people and their ignorant hides!
    If you’d listened to them, you’d think they’ve been responsible for most of history!

  • Glossolalia Black

    Yay for Library Nerds, for they probably make up a nice chunk of the hobbyist Wikipedia editor sect.

  • Rukasu

    Andrew Keen is turning in his grave…

    …what’s that?…He’s still alive?

    …Oh…well…I’m sure he’s pissed.

  • richard schumacher

    And there’s something in the future for everyone to dislike.

  • zander

    Long Bets has arrived at an official decision whcih is posted on the Long Now blog here:
    http://blog.longnow.org/2008/02/01/decision-blogs-vs-new-york-times/

  • Lis Riba

    Actually, I’ve seen a fair bit of evidence that Google artificially inflates Wikipedia’s rankings — it often appears higher than more directly relevant results and higher than the same search on other engines.

    So the better candidate for 800-lb gorilla is Google itself, which can tweak the results to favor its preferred sources.