"Treat your audience like geniuses and poets and that's what they will become."-Del Close

What is a wiki? Technically speaking, wikis are web presences that anyone can alter. Open in this way, wikis facilitate linking and make it easy for users to move from browsing to writing, and back again. On this continuum, users can coordinate activities and entrain ideas on subtle levels. In other words, with wikis, we can easily share ideas, and therefore learn to write together.
At the same time it becomes helpful--and necessary, even--to ask,

 what can a wiki do?

 This question is designed to shift our definitional attention towards the ceaseless movement active wikis can sustain, and prepares us to participate (but let's not hesitate!): wiki as verb. A living verb. I am following Lynn Margulis and Dorian Sagan, who, following Vladimir Vernadsky, insist on troping the noun "life" to it's gerundive and verb forms, emphasizing the ongoing change and dynamics of living systems. "The question "What is Life?" is thus a linguistic trap. To answer according to the rules of grammar, we must supply a noun, a thing. Life on Earth is more like a verb. It repairs, re-creates, and outdoes itself" (Margulis and Sagan 14). The wiki way is the same: "to wiki" is to repair, recreate, outdo, alter, etc...

Please click edit, and add your thoughts. What can a wiki do?

Asking "what can wiki do" is like staring into a mirror and asking, "What can this reflection do?"

The two most salient features of wiki technology are:

1. It is a blank slate, a tabula rasa. The wiki is like water, a "formless" medium of affective forces.

2. There is no singular author. It is not about you. In fact, "you" don't even exist! The wiki is the co-creation of everyone who touches it.

The wiki is a creative realm of a purely democratic nature. The possibilities for innovation are endless. All you have to do to get started is... click "edit"! The edit button is your best friend. Do not be shy. Edit. Edit the shit out of this wiki. Comment on each other's work. Remix each other's writings. Collaborate. Co-create. Reproduce. Novelty through repitition. Improvise.

And most important, a note for the newbies: if you're confused, then you're on the right path! The next step is to start writing... NOW.

and start

Here is a wiki about wikis!!

The student’s career is governed by several levels of authority: teacher, college, university, state, and federal.  Each level has limitations that students are accustomed to and comfortable with. The wiki forces the traditional student to step out of a traditional classroom setting (physical and mental) and embrace the possibilities that lie between learning, reading, writing, and technology.  We are students of new media.  The way we think and function, as students, is heavily influenced by our [over]exposure to technology.  We do not realize it; but that realization is necessary to our progress. 

Different from word processing, as commonly done on a program like MS Word, the wiki provides an electronic space for documentation and collaboration.  The created pages are alive. This is in contrast to a printed piece of writing, which “dies” after being printed.  Contributions and connections are welcomed by a little button at the top.

Edit.

As a timid and green contributor, this is the shortest route to acclimation—a method like sitting on the stairs in a cold pool.  Type a letter, a word, a sentence, a paragraph.  Save.

Dive in the deep end and create a new page.  It’s all the same.

Make connections, and make links.

Edit.

Link.

Save.

Edit.

Link.

Create new page.

Save.

Edit.

Save.

…Times infinity.  You are not limited by class time, page numbers, hand-raising, permission, or character limits.  The wiki is what you see, what you don’t, who you see, and who you don’t.

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Asking what the wiki can do is a bit like asking what a piece of paper can do. It can do nothing, but you can do a million things with it. What do you want to do with it? 

+++++++

The functionality of wikis isn't a concern.  What can you do with a wiki isn't a concern.  What am I supposed to do with this wiki isn't a concern.  

My concern deals with 'keeping up'.  Right now, I feel like I've walked into a virtual room and someone took a bunch thoughts, papers, books, magazine articles, DVDs, MP3s, and photographs and just threw them up in the air.  Everything has landed randomly on the floor - some of with attribution, some of it without, and I'm supposed to read, watch, and listen to it all - and have something to say about it all, link it all together.

And it's only week two.  In a few more weeks, I can only imagine the room will turn into a house on an episode of "Hoarders" with boxes, coffee cans, old margarine containers, folders, envelopes, and trash bags full of stuff I never knew I had.  My job - to sort threw to it all and find what I want to use and what I don't.

In a sense, that's the internet.  I get it.  But, you can't read the entire internet.  I have this feeling I'm on the hook to read everything my class creates.  But it's become almost like the magician's scarf being pulled from his sleeve - it just keeps going and going, it doesn't stop.  One post is linked to another post that has a link to an article that references five websites you gotta read to really 'get it'... 

It's not a complaint - really.  Just an observation in harnessing technology and being practical with one's time management. ~ Boda

OFF THE HOOK: SLOWNESS IS ANOTHER SPEED, or HOW NOT TO WIKIFY YOUR ENTIRE LIFE

No, Jay, your post doesn't read like a complaint--more like well-tuned response to the way that surfing the infoquake can sometimes feel very exhilarating and at other times give you that "deer in the headlights" feeling, frozen, unable to respond. You already "get it." You are it! We have to be glad that it only took two weeks to create a real context for talking about "information management," but this means that we must move on. We're warmed up, and we understand that rhetoric is, in part, a science of attention, so now let's take the next step.  Let me clarify a few things. First: you are correct, there is NO WAY that you can "cover" everything. That is not your charge. Of course, the wiki will continue to grow in n-dimensions and you may continue to browse it for pleasure, profit, for the nonprofits, etc; however, please please please abandon all hopes and fears with regards to some sort of "coverage model." For the first couple of weeks, we have to focus on inputs, but when we reach a certain critical mass, we must stop and reflect on where we are and what we want to do. So, here we are. Unit One, Writing to Explore. Today we talked about limit functions (audience, purpose) for your browsing, analyzing, and responding. We also drew up a new script, for the next phase, where we are only responsible for composing one piece of writing (Writing to Explore), and for carefully reading (deep attention) the explorations of 3 peers. See 7 September. This is a very reasonable transition--from parataxis and strategies of hyper-attention, we move into a phase of paying deep attention to a small amount of peer prose in process. Yes, it's time to slow it down! You are right on time. Soon, there will be more limits: 2 philanthropy boards, advocacy clusters, and so on. In fact, every unit assignment asks that you continue to dial IN on the particulars of your rhetorical situation and the rhetorical situations designed/imagined by 2 or 3 peers. Question, though: whose sleeve? I didn't invent the internet, Al Gore did :) -ShareRiff

From my experience, the best thing you can do is read, tag, link, and write.  Recent changes will keep you up to speed for the most part.  It most definitely gets more focused and "easier" once the great Pangaea of students drift into board members, advocates and documenteers (if that applies).  Keep on keeping on. -JB