Wiki and/or Blog? What is the difference?

Wikis and Blog are different beasts. The difference is philosophical, but has a major impact their respective ability to generate a suitable DreamScape Environment

In epistemology (theory of knowledge) there are two broad camps on the creation of knowledge, the way of the water (ecological) and the way of the lego (mechanistic).

Wiki is the way of water. Mainly used in Evolutionary Epistemology. Take a glass of water. The water represents a body of knowledge. First if you add more water, it would be impossible to extact the last water added. The body of knowledge has grown but there are no discrete entities. The other main difference is that water will adapt in a stress-less manner. Wiki therefore is an Ecological Metaphor. Each contributes to the ever-evolving body of water, there is no single owner, all own the water together.

Blog is the way of lego. Mainly used in non-evolutionary Epistemology. Build a house of lego bricks. You can see which brick has made what contribution to the build. And you could extract a brick as a discrete entity. If you put the lego house under pressure it will not adapt. Blog belongs to a Mechanistic Metaphor.
With a Blog the house builder presents the house only when completed and then asks everyone else to comment. The house always remains the property of the builder.

Within the Au Conceptual Architecture we use a ContinuuM between Mechanistic and Ecological Metaphor.

Genetically engineered hybrids. Of interest is the cross breeding between Wiki and Blog to create a number of genetically engineered hybrids. Micro content designs such as tiddlywiki produce a very workable solution.

Using a dream tree as an example, the Wiki allows full participation in evolving the tree, a blog allows you to make comments on the tree only when it is finished. The wiki therefore has a greater sense of "collective" ownership. From a creative standpoint Wiki is a more powerful non-linear tool, the blog is a linear tool. Although useful a blog could not as the primary mechanism in any ecomimetic system.

Wiki also have more powerful editing facilities and the ability to use the Wiki-word for (non-linear) navigation.

Degree of Creativity. We considered, from a purely creative view, the role of various web tools. Placed on a creativity - formalisation ContinuuM , I concluded the following:-

Instant Messaging - Wiki - Blog - Web Page

Creativity <------------> Formalisation

Non-linear < ----------> Linear

To view a list of the other Wikis we explored, check out WikiOptions