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At Public Books, media professor Alice E. Marwick reviews Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness by Nathaniel Tkacz, a book that casts a skeptical eye on the seemingly harmless technological concept of “openness”:
In Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness, Nathaniel Tkacz carefully addresses one of the most enduring myths of technology’s participatory potential: openness. “Openness” is a bit of a catchall term, but generally implies unrestricted participation, transparency in governance, and widespread collaboration. (Think “open” as in open-source software, open-access journals, or Massive Open Online Courses.) As Tkacz systematically argues, openness is a political project that obscures its own inner workings, sweeping power differentials and inequality under an apolitical rug. In other words, a project that proclaims itself “open” is able to sidestep questions of power and agency—even when it’s clear, as in the case of Wikipedia, that such issues remain. As a software engineer might say, this murkiness is a feature, not a bug; it is precisely the apparent ability of openness to float above the mire that appeals to people across the political spectrum, and makes it almost invulnerable to critique.
Image: A woman holding the Wikipedia logo. Photograph by Lane Hartwell / Wikimedia Foundation. Via Public Books.