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_ General Discussion _ The purpose of Wikipedia and the other sites

Posted by: Text

Well, given the recent problems with data interception and spying on "allied" and "friendly" nations, carried out by well meaning people in the best democracy available on this planet, one could say that the master plan they had devised for several decades has finally come to light.

And the Web 2.0, including Wikipedia, is part of their plan. All the data was scattered on tiny little servers, but has been, and will be, grabbed and recomposed gradually to be shaped, manipulated, and diffused as needed.

Jimbo Wales benefited from this aggregating power, but the researchers, who designed all the architecture upon which Wikipedia resides, know its workings as he never will. They're ready to lead a new war, and all the eyes of the web will see for them.

Trivial information will be his, the most important theirs.

And the books of old, with all their knowledge, what can they do but burn?

Posted by: Retrospect

QUOTE(Text @ Tue 29th October 2013, 4:35pm) *

the best democracy available on this planet
nope.gif
QUOTE
And the books of old, with all their knowledge, what can they do but burn?

Hey, the Internet is making these books of old, with all their knowledge, much more available.
https://archive.org/advancedsearch.php

Posted by: Emperor

QUOTE(Text @ Tue 29th October 2013, 11:35am) *

Well, given the recent problems with data interception and spying on "allied" and "friendly" nations, carried out by well meaning people in the best democracy available on this planet, one could say that the master plan they had devised for several decades has finally come to light.

And the Web 2.0, including Wikipedia, is part of their plan. All the data was scattered on tiny little servers, but has been, and will be, grabbed and recomposed gradually to be shaped, manipulated, and diffused as needed.

Jimbo Wales benefited from this aggregating power, but the researchers, who designed all the architecture upon which Wikipedia resides, know its workings as he never will. They're ready to lead a new war, and all the eyes of the web will see for them.

Trivial information will be his, the most important theirs.

And the books of old, with all their knowledge, what can they do but burn?


Good post. Your point about the danger of concentrating information into one centralized database is a good one.

Posted by: Text



Posted by: Retrospect

QUOTE(Emperor @ Mon 4th November 2013, 3:37am) *

Your point about the danger of concentrating information into one centralized database is a good one.

And the Internet stops that happening, chucklehead. I no longer need to visit the British Library nearly as often as I used to. Much of what I need to study, I can download!

Posted by: Text

Make sure you print what you download then, because it's proven that reading everything on a screen for hours can fatigue the eyes a lot due to the constant refreshing of the monitor, and it's also harder to assimilate information from a hypertext page due to the constant "jumps" from a page to another while clicking to obtain information, which distract the reader.

Posted by: Retrospect

QUOTE(Text @ Mon 25th November 2013, 11:15am) *

Make sure you print what you download then, because it's proven that reading everything on a screen for hours can fatigue the eyes a lot due to the constant refreshing of the monitor, and it's also harder to assimilate information from a hypertext page due to the constant "jumps" from a page to another while clicking to obtain information, which distract the reader.

Fair point but I'm not going to print out the whole of a bloody 300 page book if I'm only dipping in and out of it. I follow a wise 20-20-20 rule; every 20 minutes spend 20 seconds looking at things at least 20 feet away.