User:Marie Wocher/Thesis Proposal

The web cheated on me

Throughout my time at PZI I want to investigate how we experience knowledge on the web. I am interested in the way users of the Web act in popular structures, such as Wikipedia, Facebook and Google. By means of surveys and Cultural Probes I want to find out how we acquire, participate and process knowledge on the web […]

Why? For my part, I grew up believing that the web knows everything. And that it will change everything. I believed that the web would help me in finding answers to all questions I have. But I start realizing that the knowledge on the Web is very limited and I don't get my questions answered which leads to disappointment. I would like to find out where this promise, that the Web knows everything, has its origin and from whom I adapted this belief.

Why and is there a disillusion of promises?

My aim is to answer the question if the web failed (or its promises) from different positions

a) ideologists

like Bruno Latour and Michelle Serres who saw the web as this massive opportunity and predict that the web will cause a deep social and educational transformation

b) technologists

Corry Doctrow (?)

c) the market

the opportunists that where tapping into this idealism and make a product out of it. They use the opportunities of the web to make money out of it

the question of idealism versus pragmatism

The example of Wikipedia

In 2001 they started with the idea of bringing together the knowledge of the world by inviting everyone to participate. Now the debate is about commercial advertising and legal issues and the disillusionment that Wikipedia is not written by the population at large

Manuel Castells - The Theory of the Network Society


Michel Serres


Jean-Francois Lyotard – The Postmodern Condition