The BBC doco on internet history (additional Resource for this week) provides a comprehensive and balanced take on the emergence of internet infrastructure and online cultures.  Their discussion on Wikipedia and interview with Ory okolloh (founder of Ushahidi) makes me think of Landow’s suggestion of hypertext environments as “a model of society or conversations in which no one conversation, no one discipline or ideology dominates or founds the others.”  (Landow 2006:123)

The suggestion seems to evoke an anti-hierarchical sentiment, which lends itself to challenging notions of control and authority in user generated content spaces.  However, I’m not so sure that these instances sit so well within the ‘edifying philosophy’ supposedly prevalent in internet culture; while the content is generated by the ‘every-day person’, steering away from meritocracy, there still seems to be a value on ‘objective truth’ – that Wikipedia is supposed to appear as factually accurate (i.e an encyclopedia) and Ushahidi is supposed to be providing the ‘truth’ that established state governed media is not.

Another key point comes at the end, about how such a large percentage of blogs are now dormant (around 90%).  This also seems to lend to the idea that sites backed by the most resources may tend to have the strongest voice – another way in which the notion of a free democratic internet is challenged.

Landow, George P. Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006. Print. 107-124