Last night I was watching Jon Stewart interview John Dean on the Daily Show (yes, I’m a little behind on my iTunes Daily Show downloads), and Dean’s comments about researching for his new book prompted me to read the Wikipedia entry on him. The entry includes a link to an article Dean wrote for FindLaw called, “Doing Legal, Political, and Historical Research on the Internet: Using Blog Forums, Open Source Dictionaries, and More”.
It’s a wonderful first-person account of his use of TPM Cafe, a forum for readers of the political blog Talking Points Memo to find data that was proving elusive when he used more traditional research methods; his exploration of Wikipedia, and his reflection that many of the tech-savvy people he’s told about collaborative, open-source information sources are just as ignorant of them as he was until he started exploring. He even takes an open-minded approach to an error in his Wikipedia entry, opting to test the promise of the Wikipedia collaborative model and see if someone else fixes it, instead of fixing it himself or complaining publicly.

He finishes the piece with this quote: “And Wikipedia is just one example of a free site that relies on voluntary contributions – and correction – of information from a host of readers, writers and editors, and is thus, in this sense, “open source.” It seems that the potentials of open source approaches in our Age of Information are endless. By bringing the information, experiences, knowledge and wisdom of many different minds together, such sources unite the resources of geographical disparate friends, colleagues and, very often, strangers. In this way, we might actually solve many of society’s serious problems.”