| Andrew Orlowski | |
|---|---|
 Orlowski at a going-away party in San Francisco. |
|
| Born | 1966 |
| Occupation | Columnist for online IT newspaper The Register. |
|
Website Andrew Orlowski |
|
Andrew Orlowski (born 1966) is a British columnist for the online IT newspaper The Register.
Contents |
In 1992, Orlowski started an alternative newspaper in Manchester, England called Badpress.[1] He has also written for Private Eye magazine.[2] In the late 1990s, he worked at Dennis Publishing, on the magazine PC Pro, and at Ziff Davis UK.
Orlowski became a columnist based in San Francisco, U.S. for The Register in 2000.
In April 2003, he coined the term googlewashing to describe the potential for well-linked weblogs to obscure the original meaning of a controversial expression (e.g., "the Second Superpower").[3]
Orlowski later classified this[4] along with "absurd intellectual property claims" as an example of an unwarranted assumption of power or authority to gain sociological advantage on behalf of a particular lobby group. This factor is the core of what makes a story "great", he argues.
In December 2004, he was invited to assemble a panel on techno-utopianism at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.[5] Orlowski argues that this form of utopianism distracts attention and diverts capital away from solving real infrastructure problems.[6] "Technology can help us," he writes on his FAQ page.[4] "But we venerate the machines we have, which aren't very good, and worse, limit ourselves to seeing the world through this machine metaphor. Technology is useful when it makes something we already like to do easier. Technology can't tell us something we don't know. Technology cannot solve problems that don't exist."
See also Criticism of Wikipedia.
After making passing references since Wikipedia was announced in 2001, Orlowski first criticized Wikipedia in The Register in mid-2004,[7] and what began as incidental mockery — often involving responses to reader's emails and characterised by his coinage of the neologism wiki-fiddler[8] — soon became a regular subject of his journalism. To Orlowski, Wikipedia is "a hobby, a multiplayer game and a repository for fan trivia"[9] with the accuracy of articles varying "from the occasionally passable to the frequently risible, while its all-important readability is even worse — and deteriorating."
By December 2005, several such articles were being published each week, with subject matter including the characterisation of Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales as a petty hypocrite and pornographer[10] and average Wikipedians as rebellious children ("He's 14, he's got acne, he's got a lot of problems with authority ... and he's got an encyclopedia on dar interweb."[11]), as well as a spoof article which announced that Wales had been shot.[12]
Orlowski's comments indicate he believes Wikipedia is undergoverned (and thus of poor quality and morally hazardous[9]) and unnecessary (in that "expensive databases" of information will become publicly accessible in the near future — "The good stuff will just come out of a computer network"[11] — and well-capitalised enterprises will provide "much more attractive" alternatives[13]). In April 2006, Orlowski expanded on these themes in an article for The Guardian,[14] in which he was the first journalist to draw attention to a then-new web site, Wikitruth, critical of Wikipedia.
Orlowski has produced numerous articles that aim to cast doubt over anthropogenic climate change, or global warming.[15] His articles often favour non-scientific pundits over the expert scientific community, for example his defence of Christopher Monckton against the American Physical Society.[16]
Orlowski has also produced a number of articles since late 2007 that has cast aspersions on peer to peer services, regardless of copyright infringing status. He has affectionately dubbed users of such services 'freetards'[17]. These articles are also rare for The Register in that they do not feature a comments section.
   | Andrew Orlowski - Andrew Orlowski : badpress.net |
| | ''The Register'' - The Register: Sci/Tech News for the World |
| | A thirst for knowledge - A thirst for knowledge | Technology | The Guardian |
| | Internet Porn: "Government report suppressed" - INTERNET PORN: "GOVERNMENT REPORT SUPPRESSED" |
| | Mistakes Techno Utopians Make: Fantasy Politics and the Disappearing Social - Session Descriptions - Internet + Society 2004 |
| | ''BoingBoing.net article'' - Boing Boing: Correcting the Record: Wikipedia vs The Register |
| | Photograph of Andrew Orlowski - ITC :: In The City |
|
|
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
