Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Wikipedia- The Modern Expert

Wikipedia is in my opinion an amazing academic, intellectual, social phenomenon. I used it first in 2005, it wasn't exactly new then(created in 2001) and is improves everyday. It contains a plethora of information-significant stuff to insignificant- on an incredible of amount of ever expanding topics. If this had been here sooner we could have all spent so much time finding out insightful details about the lives of our favorite music stars, some city like Valparaiso Chile that you've barely even heard of. And best of all: correct information about historical events or people which the people who lived through it or already know about it are too biased or their memory does not serve them properly to actually relate it themselves. Note: Picture is a snowflake uplclose compliments of wikipedia.

Some people critique Wikipedia (just as they did the internet circa mid to late 90's) for its authenticity because literally 'anyone' can add or edit an entry. Misinformation on the site, is I believe limited and much less than people suppose for two reasons.
1) It's updated frequently-by good sources. (I once made a posting before lunch and when I returned it had been improved with more info).
2) It's difficult to miseducate people on topics on which you are ignorant.

So it's still good to double check sources for research. But Wikipedia gives further illimunination that we know more collectively than individually.

2 comments:

atelan said...

I really liked this post, Marc. I'm definitely a Wikipedia fan. It provides me with hours of entertainment at the same time it educates me... It's probably the best thing to have happened to the internet, really.

Marc Jorgensen said...

Thanks, I love that snowflake so much.