Modelli di elaborazione della conoscenza on line: Google e Wikipedia

The paper focuses on the relation between digital communication networks and knowledge processing practices: my essay aims to point out, through the theoretical framework of Harold Innis and Manuel Castells, the contemporary forms of cultural monopoly and bias of communication. In the shift from the mass-media society to that of the networks, new models of knowledge processing and systematization are arising from new technologies communication processes based on open source/open content applications. In the network society specifically technocrat cultures and models coexist with social experiences of elaboration and systematization of knowledge based upon openness, peer-collaboration and inspired by an ideal-communitarian ethic. The comparison between Google and Wikipedia underlines clearly the dynamic of such a process; it emphasizes the modernity of Innis’ thought and the idea of monopoly related to the forms and the logic through which knowledge is managed and made available through the networks.