Webupon

In this time when the individual is deemed important more than ever, when “I” matters, and when ‘You’ is appreciated through networks, WIKI stands out to be one of those advancements in communication and information that everyone has now been gradually being familiar about.

“What I Know Is” gives value to an individual’s place in the globally connected world. It emphasizes the emerging web-based culture of “shared knowledge”. Perhaps, when people hear of wiki, they would immediately think of Wikipedia, an internet site offering wiki services. Wikipedia is slowly dominating rosters of information sources in the internet. Students are now looking up Wikipedia for different types of information. However, no one seems to be really familiar about how wikis work more than the idea that it is the people, the common people, who enter such information which we now see in sites such as Wikipedia.

I managed to self-study wikis. What motivated me to study it and create my own wiki web page in Wikispaces a month ago was the need to collaborate with my team mates for a national Public Relations competition which we participated in (and in which we placed 3rd!). Since we cannot possibly meet every day, I thought of creating a way in which we could still keep up with each other’s notes or comments or changes in our paper. That was when I thought of creating a wiki for us, which proved to be very helpful especially come the last few days before the submission.

Wikis can be very useful not just in activities in school just like in my example. In organizations, wikis can be used to allow collaboration among people. By collaboration, I do not only mean passive meeting. Wikis can be an “active” form of meeting because in wikis, one can see the latest changes in a project which your team is working on. One is given freedom to edit, add, and delete things from the project instantly. In a way, wikis give one a feeling that the project is “moving” or that the team is truly “working”, even if everyone is physically separated. At the end of the day, one can really say that “We have accomplished something.” and everyone participated in this accomplishment.

Wikis very much exemplify knowledge work. Knowledge work involves the co-creation of new perspectives, which in turn, lead to more effective actions. With wikis, people become knowledge workers because they share what they know for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. As a member of Wikipedia, you can share what you know about a person, or a thing, or a place, etc. Another person can edit it also to make the information more accurate or to simply update it.

What are all these for? Are people just genuinely concerned about bringing information to people? Perhaps. People have nothing to lose in the first place by sharing what they know. Since we live in an age when “I” matters, we can assume that people have their reasons for doing what they do. No matter what those reasons are, we should appreciate the fact that people invest time in co-creation of perspectives—one very important activity that will help us think beyond the readily available information and promote even more effective solutions for problems which we may be faced with.