Knowledge, neo-liberalism and mediatization: The crystal of Wikipedia

This article presents neo-liberal notions of knowledge and market and explains why this is important for the functioning of digital platforms. Neo-liberals are concerned with everyday knowledge of the common people, their mental states and feelings, not intellectual knowledge. The satisfaction of consumers and prediction of their future preferences is the basis for creating Big Data. Neo-liberals utilize it, fully cognisant of its status as a failed post-truth mechanism for interpreting everyday knowledge. The market functions through individual use and mutual adjustment of limited personal knowledge, of customers as well as producers. It is not free but cybernetically ordered market. Hayek defines market as a communication system that is digesting dispersed information. Millions of minds are doing data generation and processing. That way, neo-liberals see all digital platforms, including Wikipedia, as markets. Classical encyclopaedias are centrally controlled and expert driven, while neo-liberal markets create knowledge through crowds’ ‘voluntary exchange’ and ‘spontaneous cooperation’. The fundamental difference is that encyclopaedias were an Enlightenment project, while Wikipedia is producing recycled intellectual and layman’s knowledge without any political or revolutionary engagement.