Here’s what I’m not saying here — I’m not saying the old paradigms of fact-gathering and reporting don’t work. I believe they often do. But the reflexive dismissal of alternative models of information-gathering dismays me, not least because I believe the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press was supposed to have meaning for every citizen, not just the journo class, or the scholar class.

Now, on the Internet, we see these prerogatives playing out, and, what do you know, in spite of all the crap and in spite of all the naysaying predictions, which mostly come from people invested in the old order, lots of useful stuff is out there. Wikipedia, with all its flaws, is an amazing accomplishment, and it stands for the proposition that, whatever its vulnerabilities, most of us want to promote the truth, to share knowledge, to make it available for everybody else, and to make the world better.

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