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The United Nations, notorious for endless deliberations, is trying a technological quick fix. Its Global Compact Office, which promotes corporate responsibility, has embraced a once marginal social technology—the wiki—in the hope that it will help staff in 80 countries share information and reach consensus with less deliberation and more speed. The office has done this by enlisting the public in its review of progress reports from more than 2,000 companies—an effort to make sure each is complying with established social and environmental guidelines. It’s debatable whether encouraging public input is a good way to increase efficiency, but the move is the latest example of a quickly growing trend.
Wiki software—easy-to-use programs that let anyone with Internet access create, remove and edit content on a Web page—first gained popularity thanks to Wikipedia, the user-generated encyclopedia that has come to be praised as one of the Web’s greatest resources. Now the technology is increasingly spreading outside the world of bizarre tech people and into the mainstream, being adopted by workplaces, corporations and even governments. In what’s been called the “wiki workplace,” a growing number of organizations have begun shifting from traditional hierarchical structures to self-organized and collaborative networks, using wiki software—a basket of technologies that include wikis, blogs and other tools—to foster innovation across organizational and geographic boundaries. Executives say the new tools make it easier for teams to collaborate and share information, and to get projects up and running on the fly. “Collaborative software has become a very important part of how businesses will invent and innovate,” says Ken Bisconti, IBM’s vice president of messaging and collaboration software.
That the United Nations is embracing wikis is an indication that organizations are beginning to get over their fear that this technology could introduce chaos into their operations. As Wikipedia has demonstrated, Web sites that are open to the public are vulnerable to deliberate injury, bias, inconsistency and other problems. But most corporate wikis are closed to the public, limiting access to employees inside the company firewall. These quasi-closed systems, say technology experts, impose accountability simply by keeping a record of every change and who made it.
IBM has used internal wikis since 2005, with an eye to selling the concept to its clients. One of its first applications was a wiki that employees could use to collaborate on writing a blogging manifesto: a set of policies for appropriate use of blogs in and out of the office. Thousands of employees contributed and edited that manifesto, which after receiving corporate approval—became the company’s official policy.
1. What is the passage mainly about?
A) It is about how the United Nations is forced to adopt the wiki software to improve efficiency.
B) It is an introduction to the wiki technology and its growing trend.
C) It reviews the advantages and disadvantages of wiki technology.
D) It is about the immaturity of the wiki technology and its future development.
2. The application of the wiki technology turns out to be _______.
A) very reliable
B) rather superficial
C) somewhat contradictory
D) quite encouraging
3. The basic problem of applying wiki technology lies in that _______.
A) some people doubt it is a communist plot
B) the technology is still not mature enough to be used widely
C) there might be purposeful injury and damage from the public
D) the technology can only be used internally
4. Which of the following is NOT the advantage of wiki technology?
A) It is a safe technology when being applied both externally and internally.
B) The public can participate in the creation of web contents.
C) It can enhance communication at least within an organization.
D) It helps promote innovation and improve work efficiency.
5. Which of the following is TRUE according to the text?
A) UN has gained positive results by using wiki technology.
B) IBM’s adoption of wikis turns out to be a failure.
C) Wiki software is changing some corporate network structure.
D) Wiki websites will replace conventional websites.