Commonplace Wikis

Now all Wikis are commonplace. Once this was a novel idea, an Internet community creating together for a common cause. Now everyone is getting into it. Community making starts to combine the Blog and the Wiki. Now we see huge applications collecting individuals in interconnected communities sometimes just for the purpose of socializing, and other times for specific objectives. Applications like FaceBook , BOOMJ , and MySpace are populated by millions of inhabitants, each a link in a chain and a link to a new chain.

These community formats are all formulated on the model of a structured Wiki. This means that there is a minimal amount of writing. Most of it is choose and click, subscribe, or upload. Content is generated easily and quickly, and a narrative of actions is generated as well as the most recent state of the occupant such as "Mary is sleeping."

This is Everyman or The Truman Show at its ultimate. Now all of us star in our own dramas, and these dramas are remarkably similar. But the new rising value is community fulfillment over individual achievement. Humankind is evolving a new gregarious species where personal identity disappears in the collective consciousness, and popularity is more important than individual character.