I decided to take on an issue very dear to me - the impressive power of Wikipedia. You can read it below, by following the link in the top right hand corner of the page, or by clicking here to go directly to the article!
I remember the dark days of the internet. Yahoo was the default browser, eBay lacked safety and fair bidding, and one of the world’s greatest inventions - Wikipedia - was not even heard of.
Now, many of us cannot think of a world without it.
A true portal into the unknown, one can often find themselves lost in the pages of links. For example, in three clicks I moved from The Siege of Sevastopol (1941-1942) to Lauryn Hill, formerly of the Fugees.
I now know the major events on my birthday, from the births of Paul Weller, Sheriff John Bunnell and Mike Myers to the fact that Hands Across America took place on the very day I was born.
Without it, I would never have known that more Vietnam veterans committed suicide after the conflict than died during it, or that Wentworth Miller - Michael Scofield in Prison Break - was born in Chipping Norton.
However, far from being just a source of pub conversations, Wikipedia highlights something significant - not just about the evolution of the internet, but of the necessity for information by all people.
Students have never had it so easy. Had it not been for Wikipedia, my studies at university would have been ten times harder. This is not out of laziness either - it just so happens that Wikipedia provides easy, concise and interesting information about any given topic.
Failing that, many others will have happily provided links at the bottom to other hard-to-find websites and selected essays. These not only provide a solid factual basis to many points raised by those who choose to write about the given subject, but also shows active encouragement for others to learn more about the topic in what can only be seen as a selfless act.
It can have its drawbacks, however. With interest comes relative article length. The phenomenon, known by many as Wikigroaning, has showed us that the article on Jedi knights is longer than the one about Christian saints, or that the entry for Marvel Comics’ Iron Man is more substantial than that for iron, the metal.
But really, who cares? It is not as if there are restrictions on the size of Wikipedia, or that certain topics deserve more coverage than “less important” issues.
Wikipedia is perhaps the closest we will get to democracy. Truths are upheld and lies are quashed by right-thinking members of society. Like everything free and open, it is open to abuse, falsities and unsubstantiated beliefs. Regardless, it’s probably the quickest, easiest and most interesting way to get information on absolutely anything and everything, and shows how much we value it.
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