i love wikipedia

I needed to look up something about EU membership today, and went to the Wikipedia artile on it. — and I’m reminded yet again what a wondrous thing it is. I could spend hours looking at pages like this — learning things I’d forgotten, and many I’d never known. Even the disclaimers at the top of the page are wonderful — indicating contested parts of the content, that there could be/is bias in the article, etc. Just a magnificent evolution of shared knowledge, I think, for all its faults. For me, it’s ground zero for human beings to learn again how to really read. How to read in an age of ubiquitous and cheap creation tools — how to read in an age where understanding point of view of authors is paramount.

But this article is just a beautiful example of what’s possible. In the middle of a busy work day for me, I am undone.

2 comments

  1. Wikipedia is possibly my favorite website. I’m absolutely in love with what I perceive as a union of the encyclopedia and the blog.

    But I have to be careful: if I look something up, I will undoubtedly end up casually reading related articles for hours. Come to think of it.. Wikipedia really reminds me of the feeling of the early web, when every website belonged to a ring and there was a links page on every site.. You could totally lose yourself in an endless stream of semi-related content.

  2. Wikipedia is possibly my favorite website. I’m absolutely in love with what I perceive as a union of the encyclopedia and the blog.

    But I have to be careful: if I look something up, I will undoubtedly end up casually reading related articles for hours. Come to think of it.. Wikipedia really reminds me of the feeling of the early web, when every website belonged to a ring and there was a links page on every site.. You could totally lose yourself in an endless stream of semi-related content.