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OK so maybe some of his claims are comically grandiose. But I've found Rap Genius useful recently for finding explanations of poems by Yeats,Wordsworth and man

OK so maybe some of his claims are comically grandiose. But I've found Rap Genius useful recently for finding explanations of poems by Yeats,Wordsworth and many others. The convenience of being able to see the explanation right there without having to scroll or navigate away really helped me get into the poetry. I can see this approach being extended into many other areas. Theres a lot of potential in the idea of being able to annotate select parts of a document instead of having to comment on the whole document. I think we need an annotator for the web. Maybe it would work as a browser extension and users could annotate any part of any website with extra comments , photos etc. Another approach might be to develop an embeddable widget which could allow anyone to annotate any part of a web page. But I couldnt figure how to handle changes to the original document if the model isnt under our control.

Helpful_Bunny 13y ago
The question (and this applies to Wikipedia as well) is whose explanation are you reading? I'd throw you a quotation about the Power of Language, but I'm sure you can imagine it already. This site marks the end of 19th / 20th Century propaganda, which relies on an ignorant audience to swallow the lies without being able to fact-check them[1] (e.g. The Protocols of Zion or the "re-imagining" of Founder Father's texts to be anti-Semitic or (to be even) the notion that America was founded as respecting all of its citizens as equal - you'll want to read the 13th closely, you're all breaking the Law somehow, which is the hack they're going to use on you). Modern Propaganda doesn't do this: it uses truth, but with hooks.[2] The More You Know. Footnotes, because I forget that not all readers share similar thought patterns: [1] If this is true, what does that tell you about the content of most mainstream American News, and its consumers, and the future of these companies? [2] Is my statement propaganda? Answer: of course it is, everything you consume online is.
- ratsimihah 13y ago
  Whose? The Voice's. The ultimate truth who's always right. Wouldn't that be convenient? I'm sure if Rap Genius is going to be bigger than Google and Facebook (combined, obviously), they call pull that off.

Helpful_Bunny 13y ago

The question (and this applies to Wikipedia as well) is whose explanation are you reading? I'd throw you a quotation about the Power of Language, but I'm sure you can imagine it already. This site marks the end of 19th / 20th Century propaganda, which relies on an ignorant audience to swallow the lies without being able to fact-check them[1] (e.g. The Protocols of Zion or the "re-imagining" of Founder Father's texts to be anti-Semitic or (to be even) the notion that America was founded as respecting all of its citizens as equal - you'll want to read the 13th closely, you're all breaking the Law somehow, which is the hack they're going to use on you). Modern Propaganda doesn't do this: it uses truth, but with hooks.[2] The More You Know. Footnotes, because I forget that not all readers share similar thought patterns: [1] If this is true, what does that tell you about the content of most mainstream American News, and its consumers, and the future of these companies? [2] Is my statement propaganda? Answer: of course it is, everything you consume online is.

ratsimihah 13y ago
Whose? The Voice's. The ultimate truth who's always right. Wouldn't that be convenient? I'm sure if Rap Genius is going to be bigger than Google and Facebook (combined, obviously), they call pull that off.