Commentary:
‘Crowdsourcing’ or mob rule?
By Parker T. Williamson, The Layman, September 14, 2010
“Crowdsourcing.” Did we just slip a typo past our editors, or might that word be real? It’s real if Wikipedia has anything authoritative to say about the matter. After all, “crowdsourcing” is what Wikipedia does.
And what, precisely, does Wikipedia do? It allows you to make up your own words, or to assign your own meaning to words that already exist. No credentials are required: No Ph.D. in linguistics; no knowledge of root words, etymology, original language, context or syntax; no appeal to Webster or other person of merit. Just let your fingers stroll onto the keyboard, hit “send,” and Presto! You are an authoritative source.
At least for now. Your definition reigns supreme until someone out there in cyberspace supplants your meaning with another.
Wikipedia represents pure democracy. This “free encyclopedia that anyone can edit,” according to Newsweek’s Tony Dokoupil and Angela Wu, has grown from 100,000 articles in 2003 to more than 15 million today. Wikipedia proudly touts its product as “the sum of all human knowledge.”
One might also dub it “mob rule.”
And that’s precisely the point. In this egalitarian, Alice in Wonderland sphere, John Doe and Plato share common ground. If you prefer more sources, throw in Muhammad. And, of course, Jesus is also welcome, albeit not in any hierarchical sense.
Author Phyllis Tickle describes crowdsourcing as a symptom of “The Great Emergence,” a phenomenon in which the church experiences itself as a network, much like the World Wide Web. In this configuration, the church is not an entity or a “thing.” Rather, it is a dynamic interplay of millions of ideas, passions and beliefs that bounce around with no need for imprimatur.
“The end result of this understanding of dynamic structure is the realization that no one of the member parts or connecting networks has the whole or entire ‘truth’ of anything, either as such and/or when independent of the others,” she writes. “Each is only a single working piece of what is evolving and is sustainable so long as the interconnectivity of the whole remains intact.”[1]
Tickle appears to believe that this “nondoctrinal spirituality” is something new. But those who know Scripture have seen it all before: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6, esv).
What’s lacking, of course, is our refusal to acknowledge any authority above ourselves. We’re talking here of a world without God, a world that does not – will not – hear “Thus says the Lord,” a world where “crowdsourcing” is all there is.
This is the world that the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s vice moderator embraced when shortly after the General Assembly adjourned, he opined that “Scripture is no longer an authority.”
It is the world represented by the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly when he tried to back up an assertion by quoting a Scripture that does not exist. (When challenged concerning the source of his quotation, he referred the matter to a staffer from the denomination’s Washington lobby who admitted that since no extant version of the Bible included the word she preferred, she just made up her own translation.)
Our antipathy for authority has led us to reject the one Word that is above every word. Thus we are left with “the sum of all human knowledge,” an utterance that is as fickle as the crowds that feed it.
Crowdsourcing: The mob that shouted “Hosanna,” soon thereafter changed its tune to “Crucify Him!” Convinced of its authority, crowdspeak buried its victim. Three days later, it learned who speaks the last word.
[1] Tickle, Phyllis: The Great Emergence (Grand Rapids; Baker Books; 2008); p. 152.