Wikipedia

Along the topic of free knowledge. I sought out the largest database of everything imaginable - Wikipedia (as of this writing - 14,00,000 articles and ever-increasing have been published making it the largest encyclopedic work ever compiled.) Wikipedia's motive is as follows:

Wikipedia seeks to create a summary of all human knowledge: all of topics covered by a conventional print encyclopedia plus any other "notable" (therefore verifiable by published sources) topics, which are permitted by unlimited disk space.

Such a goal, though seemingly impossible to meet, could not have been even considered just over 10 years ago.

Yet now, honestly, I search for pretty much everything on Wikipedia. And yes, though there is a questionable accuracy to articles, a number of studies have proven its reliability to be similar to that of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Regardless, how one argues for or against the site's reliability - Wikipedia has vastly enables the sharing of knowledge. It is an ever growing community of shared facts and ideas. There are thousands of discussion boards in which editors clarify ideas, revise posts, etc.

Wikipedia is becoming a knowledge base, that I image will one day compete with that of our schools. Heck, as of now I probably look for homework help about 50% of the time through Wikipedia articles.

As this knowledge base continues to grow and be refined I start to question, how exactly is the perception of knowledge going to change. Before, those highly held in society had a seemingly endless stream of facts in their heads. But with the world's information instantaneously at our finger tips, what need is there to memorize everything?

Instead I expect a gradual shift in the education process. No longer is it so important what you know, as it is what you can know, how fast you can learn it, and how fast you can adapt and incorporate these changes.

On a final note, and horrifying as it may seem, I imagine that as much as Wikipedia is a growing contribution of shared knowledge - it is exactly that which it claims - "a summary of all human knowledge." When our civilization is gone one day, will Wikipedia be our Rosetta Stone?