What impact do you think you can have on the world?
My contact with Wikimedia up until the planning process started was only as a user of Wikipedia. I had therefore no intentions to join as a Task Force member to begin with, but only to follow the process to see how things worked. As one of the Task Forces I cared most for, the Local Language projects, didn't take of I was however drawn into this process.
- What brought you to these projects, and what keeps you here?
I have for a long time used internet and in the latest years, to a high degree, Wikipedia as a source of information. I have through this usage realized the enormous power this can bring to my thought process. Especially Wikipedias in-text hyperlinking between articles is very useful, because it allows my mind to flow as free as it wants to do. Therefore I often find Wikipedia even better than much literature on the subject. Not because the quality of a single article necessarily is better than other literature, but because Wikipedia provides background information on every concept I don't understand, by a single click on the mouse. I do use Wikipedia mostly in my education, and I have realized that fifteen years ago I would have had to go to the library to search for additional information whenever my course literature didn't give me an explanation I understood. Today I can look up an alternative explanation in seconds and then move on, back then it could have taken me a couple of days before I actually visited the library. So for me Wikipedia is education at the speed of thought!
- Why do you care about Wikimedia?
- What impact do you think we're having on the world, and what impact would you like to have?
I think that not only Wikipedia and internet, but technology in general has greatly enhanced my life experience to this day. Not because I am especially interested in gadgets and the like, but because I have learned from early on how to use it to simplify my everyday life. To me technology is a friend.
I do also see that the development of society and technology follow each other hand in hand. At the same time as technology drives changes in the society, society requires new technological development to sustain the transformed society. In a long perspective technology is the reason that the human race has been able to grow so plentiful, but this plentifulness has created an enormous need to address environmental issues, handle political conflicts, carefully plan food production and so on. Whether the development is good or bad in general can be discussed, but even if one takes the later viewpoint it is impossible to stop development. What one can do is to try to make development happen in those areas that one hopes has positive effects.
One problem I see in the evolving society is that those who are well equiped, have access to knowledge, and so on, has an enormous advantage. If you where the one who knew how to operate a computer twenty years ago, you could replace a vast amount of other personal in any bussiness, leaving you with a high salary, and the others unemploymed. A mining company in a western country can use modern equipment while in a developing country a hoe might be used. In the later case you either stop mining, or accept a lower payment which in turn makes you even less able to catch up with the developed world. I think that technology at the same time as it increases the overall welfare, it also increases these kinds of gaps. Here I do believe that Wikimedia, and other developments alike, can play an essential role in forming a more equal world. Because the difference between being able to adapt to an evolving society is largely dependent on the ability to access the information that drives the change.
I am not able to judge what impact the Wikimedia movement alone can and will have, but I am convinced that it is a step in the right direction!