From First Monday, P.D. Magnus (Albany): Early response to false claims in Wikipedia; and Steve Jones, Sarah Millermaier, Mariana Goya-Martinez, and Jessica Schuler (UIC): Whose space is MySpace? A content analysis of MySpace profiles. From Lettre International, an essay on the society of the query and the Googlization of our lives. Today, learning, shopping and social networking can all be done online; this is a revolution not only of technology, but also one of sensibility. Robert Jensen on technological fundamentalism in media and culture. An excerpt from Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business by Jeff Howe. From The Economist, the idea of “crowdsourcing”, or asking crowds of internet users for ideas, is being tried out in some unusual quarters; minds of their own: One day, a machine will outsmart its maker; from plug-ins to planktonic algae, technology is part of the solution to climate change, but which technology?; and as well as trying to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, scientists have plans to re-engineer the Earth. From Good, scientists have begun to contemplate the unthinkable: the end of the sea’s abundance. Roger Altman on how the Fed can fix the world. From NYRB, George Soros on the perilous price of oil; Anthony Lewis reviews books on "official American sadism"; and Oliver Sacks reviews books on madness.
