Founded in Denver, CO, Veracious Entropy emerged out of a frustration with the mainstream media and blogosphere echo chamber and its impact on the quality of information on the Web. Our team has come together from across the country, from San Francisco, CA to Portland, ME, to offer their talents and time. Drawn to the cause, we are fortunate to have some of the brightest and most passionate people working on solutions that will revolutionize the accuracy of information everywhere. Our vision for the Veracious Blog is to build a collection of regular blog postings by some of the most credible voices from every field, industry and community. This can be anyone, including you!
The Internet is in a transition phase. Newspapers are dying and citizen journalism is generating content in record amounts. The Web is moving from the social networking era of Web 2.0, to what is being described as the semantic or decision Web. Companies like Microsoft and Google are evolving their search engines to take advantage of the decision making process of their users, while other start-ups like Hunch, Mahalo and Wolfram|Alpha are taking it a step further. Hunch hopes that users will trust it to make an informed decision without having to turn to lots of external time-consuming sources of information. Wolfram|Alpha aims even higher, to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries. While these goals are to be applauded, one can’t help but wonder about the sources and quality of the information that these and other products will use.
As the traditional means of publishing are dismantled, the role of the gatekeeper dissolves. Anyone with a picture phone and a Twitter account are contributing to create an environment in which Larry Dignan, Editor in Chief of ZDNet declares, “We are all reporters“. When Microsoft promotes it’s new decision engine, Bing, it tauts the benefit of it’s medical advice feature suggesting “you can be confident that you’re not taking the advice of a 13 year old boy.” They claim to accomplish this by sourcing reputable sites like the Mayo Clinic. While safely endorsing the Mayo Clinic, Microsoft indirectly addresses the real issue, the credibility of the source.
Our work at Veracious Entropy revolves around a belief that credibility will play a vital role as a counter measure to anonymity on the Web. As the Internet becomes the primary global vehicle for publishing and consuming information, Veracious Entropy will be there to assist in separating reliable sources from the unreliable, separating fact from fiction.
