BLOG: Blog v Wiki

Blogs and Wikis are new tools in media with a common goal to spread information. Like a publisher, a wiki or blog serves as a medium between the creator and the visitor. How can the two be distinguished? A simple way to distinguish the two is to recognize how the information was created. 

In the case of a Wiki, one to many users can colloboarte to write, edit, and publish content. With the backing of references, uses can create a link between pages, centralizing the relevant information on a wiki page. To keep the integrity of the wiki, a moderator will often be assigned to act in a similar capacity to a newspaper editor.  But is providing all the factual information in the world on a silver platter good for society? Dr. Rorschach faced the negative depths when his psychological tests were posted on wikipedia. The argument is not against copyright as it had expired, it was the notion that patients can manipulate testing results. 

Blogs on the other hand are made by an individual or organization who then have and can assign the rights to: write, edit, and publish content. Blogs belong to a person or entity and therefor the owner will want to control the integrity of the blog as they please. A blog can choose what to post or not to post and format as desired. Blogs can be heavily themed and graphically designed where a wiki uses the minimum design which is hypertext. 

Technology has been moving toward the Internet-of-things (IoT) at a rapid pace.  IoT allows for light-hardware to be bunded with specif system architecture, providing a cloud gateway and access to a network. Household task are being automated and connections to our ‘things’ are at an arms reach. New concepts are developed on how, when, and why information comes available on a network. When I look at IoT I see the need for specific data in wiki format and blog format to be displayed to users at specific call times. For example, when a user ask a Google Home “Who were the signatories of the United States Constitution?”, the device in seconds could scrub through a wiki to answer. In a a case for blogs, someone with a new smart fridge could be shown a specific cooking blog after ordering specific ingredient online. Yahoo’s purchase of Yahoo took the initiative of connecting tumblr with “its personalization technology and search infrastructure” to target what the user sees

Blogs initially belong to the signup user but they can quickly assign roles to other uses. This allows for other users to post or even edit blogs. You can have a cooking blog but have different writers for cusines Italian and Caribbean. Blogs can be outfitted with a comment section for user feedback. You can also use a collection of blogs in colobaration, for example you can create a region specific travel blog that links to; posts made by a restaurant critic, photos/videos of attractions, and excursion information. 

With industry specific issues arising daily, a wiki is a great place to centralize information for collobartion. As with Github, developers can seek outside help with computer code. If someone can design a widely used wiki, they most likely won’t be blogging about it before they see a patent lawyer.