Though few students would seriously defend citing Wikipedia in rigorous academic research, today’s college students could well be called the WikiGeneration. The nature of sites like Wikipedia has made us distinct in many ways.
Along with Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, Wikipedia is a “Web 2.0” phenomenon, a term technology watchers use to refer to the more interactive and shared Internet of the last decade or so. Web 2.0 influences our generation, consciously or otherwise, through the values that the interactive experience reflects.
For starters, we have known little else. As Wikipedia’s page on itself reports (how else would I research it?), the site was founded in 2001. In other words, the classes of 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 attended high school and college in a world with Wikipedia. Many of us use Wikipedia whenever we need general information for our own consumption.
Right now, even in the depths of a recession of historic proportions, belief in invisible hands has not completely vanished. We trust that information can be allocated by having multiple independent contributors cancel out bias. By using Wikipedia, we accept that harnessing the populace efficiently manages the deluge of information that people are interested in.
The WikiGeneration also holds dear its democratic ideals. Efforts to spread information through the internet cut across all sorts of spatial and demographic boundaries. Anyone can edit a Wikipedia page, and any serious contribution is welcome. It’s not demagogic mob rule, either: Ph.D.s are welcome to chip in.
At the root of the WikiGeneration’s experiments lies a new radical trust in sometimes disappointing technology. I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone doubt the strings of code behind Princeton’s course or room selection whoosawhatsits. We may complain about certain policies, but we generally trust the technology. The WikiGeneration finds jobs, takes virtual tours, meets people and even conducts public business online. Both presidential candidates turned to the internet to mobilize their supporters last year, and it’s not for naught that the House and Senate both launched “hubs” on YouTube. The WikiGeneration has no qualms about actively sharing and receiving information on both the most inane and the most earth-shattering topics using the internet.
Mixed in with that trust comes a curious skepticism. It’s strong, but it’s certainly not a rejection of Web 2.0. As I see it, the WikiGeneration evaluates information as quickly as the internet can bring it in. Most importantly, occasional deception and bias don’t poison the well. Whereas our great-grandparents might have soured on a medium that makes fake Nigerian prince scams so successful, the WikiGeneration keeps sifting through the internet, tossing aside the irrelevant and fraudulent with ever-increasing skill. We don’t automatically trust the information, but we trust the technology itself. Simply put, the WikiGeneration is cynical enough to question the information but not too cynical to look further for it.
The downsides of this technology matter, too. When we hit the “search” button, we surrender some fraction of our independence to distant supercomputers, searching within the algorithm’s frameworks as best we can. Even when communicating with people in the next room, we rely on microchips and invisible waves. The gains from the Digital Age are net, not absolute, and it shows in the WikiGeneration.
Nevertheless, I’m hardly a Luddite or even a killjoy. The internet expedites research and allows impressive work and scholarship to be completed more often and in less time.
Along those lines, the focus of the education of WikiGeneration scholars and leaders should be different from the focus for past generations. College will matter because it will have given thinkers the intuition and grounding to effectively harness digital libraries and databases, and education may end up with less of a focus on memorization.
This sort of change is appropriate for Wikipedia and Web 2.0. Just as we’ve each left our tracks across the web, the internet will likely end up leaving its mark on us.
Brian Lipshutz is a freshman from Lafayette Hill, Pa. He can be reached at lipshutz@princeton.edu.
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