Sources of Unconventional Sagacity

I set up Sources of Unconventional Sagacity in order to identify and value things that are, as the title suggests, unconventional in their wisdom. The thing is, that’s getting a bit harder than it used to be.

Online, there’s a lot more orthodoxy than there was five years ago. Some web sites, like Wikipedia, have established such dominance that it’s difficult NOT to come across them, even while searching for interesting resources around the margins.

Then there’s the influence of sites like deli.co.us, or del.ico.us, or whatever it is. I’ve put my foot in the water at some of these sites, like Digg, but there just isn’t much interactivity or interest in those sites. You just submit something, along with thousands of others of people, or say you like it something or don’t like it. There’s no rationale, and a low threshhold of value. Thoughtful videos about important issues are given ten digs or under, but a young girl who can wave her tongue in interesting ways gets hundreds of digs. Why should I trust that system?

Then there are social networking sites where people submit content and hope that others will discuss, like Gather. The trouble is that most people don’t have much to say, but in spite of the incentive systems on these sites, babble on anyway. So, what you get mostly at those sites are photographs of other people’s children, and “articles” that consist of nothing more than cut-and-pasted material that someone else wrote.

These networking sites offer the promise of quick and easy web promotion, but they just don’t reward much for the time people put in. After all, the system has to profit more than the users do, and with insipid content and ratings, there isn’t much profit to go around.

I think that the best way to go around is to avoid these sites, and keep to the back roads. Just as with the big interstate highways, there isn’t much of interest in the mainstream of the information superhighway.

I do find some benefit, however, to some of the bigger blog search engines, so long as I keep my searches to information that’s not at the core of the echo chamber sponsored Associated Press or Reuters. Often, the best questions at the periphery of even mainstream news stories have five or fewer people writing about them - sometimes no one at all. When I search Technorati, and I find that no blog is writing about what I want to know, then I’m on the right track.

Will I join Technorati, and create a Technorati Profile? Well, maybe, but I don’t think I’ll frequently show up to the club. It’s an old tradition to search the wilderness for wisdom, after all.

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