Encyclopedia of civility

Browse the comments section of many websites, and you’ll see examples of the depths to which our online discourse has sunk. Instead of intellectual engagement and discussion, the easy anonymity of posting on the web seems to have encouraged an online culture of ideological ranting.

The exception to this trend appears to be the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, where debate by contributing authors has become more orderly and civil over its 15-year history.

At Wikipedia, anyone may write or edit articles, but all revisions are subject to scrutiny (and further revisions) by millions of other users. According to The Washington Post, researchers at the Harvard Business School analyzed more than 70,000 political articles on the website between 2001 and 2011 and found that a onetime leftward bias has steadily become more centrist and balanced. In a draft paper published in October, the researchers noted that the act of editing political articles on Wikipedia appeared to have a moderating effect on the contributors.

“We thought this was quite striking,” study co-author Shane Greenstein, a professor at Harvard Business School, told the Post. “The most slanted Wikipedia editors tend to become more moderate over time.”

The researchers attribute much of this moderating influence to Wikipedia’s detailed guidelines for contributors as well as its insistence that every assertion be backed by a reliable source.

“This is a long-standing tradition in Wikipedia,” Greenstein told the Post. “They have always aspired to have a neutral point of view, and they’ve developed a set of norms and rules about the appropriate settling of disputes.”

My own drone

You walk out of the mall into a crowded parking lot and forget where you parked. No worries: You simply tell your smartphone, “locate car,” and a tiny drone sitting on your shoulder flies off and guides you to it. While that concept isn’t yet a reality, technology companies are exploring such possibilities.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently awarded Amazon a patent for a small, voice-activated drone that could be used as a personal assistant for various tasks, including locating missing children or helping search and rescue teams.

Users would carry the semiautonomous micro-drone in a small bag or attach it to clothing, while a separate unit integrated with the user’s smartphone would process voice instructions. The drone would also relay video back to the user via the same system.

Other practical examples suggested in the patent document include checking to see if you’ve closed your garage door or checking the road ahead during a traffic jam. Police could use the tiny drones to record interactions with suspects, and firefighters could use them to scout a burning building from a safe distance. —M.C.

Map makeover

Since the year 1569, when geographer Gerardus Mercator invented a way to project global landmasses onto a flat surface, many world maps have contained massive distortions that make Greenland and Antarctica appear much larger than they really are.

Japanese architect and artist Hajime Narukawa has been working for years to correct this problem. In October, the 2016 Good Design Award in Japan bestowed its top honor—the Grand Award—on Narukawa’s new map projection, called AuthaGraph.

The AuthaGraph map is accurate whether laid flat or folded into a sphere. By maintaining surface area proportions, the unique mapping method “faithfully represents all oceans [and] continents including the neglected Antarctica,” according to the Good Design Award website. —M.C.