"Alchemists kept their practices shrouded in secrecy. The shift from alchemy to chemistry wasn't in the practitioners, nor in the instruments they used. The difference was that chemists had become willing to expose their methods and conclusions to the withering scrutiny of their peers," he said. "The chemists said, 'We don't want to believe what isn't true,' and then: 'It's not true until someone else checks your work.' This doubting impulse led to things like peer review, the duplication of experiments, the foundation of modern science."
By empowering readers and observers with transparent access to the means by which conclusions are reached, rather than assembling them in an audience to hear the Authorities deliver the catechism from on high, we are all of us becoming scientists in this way, entering into a democracy of the intellect that is already bearing spectacular fruit, not just at Wikipedia but through any number of collaborative projects, from the Gutenberg Project to Tor to Linux.
"Learning" no longer means sitting passively in a lecture hall or on in front of a television or in a library and waiting to receive the "authoritative" version of what the experts think is up as if it were a Communion wafer. For nearly 20 years we have had the Internet, now grown into a medium of almost infinite paths, where "learning" means that you can Twitter directly to people in Egypt to ask them what they really think about ElBaradei (and get answers), ask an author or critic to address a point you feel he may have missed (ditto), or share your own insights in countless forums where they will be read and admired (and/or savaged.) Knowledge is growing more broadly and immediately participatory and collaborative by the moment.
