"Collective Intelligence"? NOT!

Relating to my previous post about Tim O'reiley's comments on the next big life-altering innovation:

This article is a beautiful example of the complete failure of, so called, "collective intelligence". For hundreds of years, the publishing industry has made it very difficult for false information to be disseminated in a medium that's freely available to all. Since the development of the WWW, anyone can publish anything, and with the advent of wiki's, it's only becoming easier.

Will there come a day when valid information no longer exists? There will be no editors (with high or terminal degrees in their fields), there will be no expensive printing presses, no reference books or reference librarians. All information will be hearsay taken as truth, and we will exist in a world of misinformation.

I think Wikipedia has great potential for harnessing the planet’s collective ignorance and promoting it as god-given truth…I’m shaking in my librarian boots.