Wikipedia is the greatest example of the
democratization process of knowledge. Here everybody can contribute to the common
knowledge: if you are specialist of any topic, just access to Wikipedia and write some page on the topic. All the users who’ll come around, looking for information about the topic, will find what you have written.
The incredible mass of contributing people makes very huge the amount of notions that are available in Wikipedia. It’s a revolutionary
encyclopedia: here you find all the things that you wouldn’t also expect to find in a normal (and also old-fashioned) encyclopedia. For example: here you find informations about pornstars, about porn businness companies, about reality show performers, about basketball players, and everyelse fact and figure coming from sport and show businness. An effect of the totally democratic access to the culture is even something curious, like the fact that a not very clever and known basketball player has a far bigger page than some very important historical person. But who cares? Today, “culture” means something different than what it meant for our grandparents and our ancestors. In this age, culture is composed by movies, hip-hop, R&B singers, rock songs, sport and hardcore starlets. There are also political little stories and gossip heroes, in this huge encyclopedia. My friend Gonzalo contributed with writing some sociological topic: he’s specialist on Tocqueville’s thought. He edited also some information on the porn starlet Briana Banks too, because he’s her biggest fan. Personally I haven’t contributed in any way, but I’ve used Wikipedia several times, mainly to find some informations about oriental religions. I must say that there are a lot of very clever people who fill very interesting pages, with details that you hardly find in other places. Even at the university, I’ve heard some professor who suggested his students to look for references on Wikipedia. So, it really seems that this online and free encyclopedia is destined to become the new authority in cultural matters.
Our sons will grow and will study on this online and totally democratic tool, not on heavy and boring books. Our sons will study much more than how we do and how our parents have done: our sons will know a lot about reality show heroes, about porn starlets and sitcom directors, about basketball players and software rich developers. Long life to Bill Gates and other internet tools geniuses! The future has never been so shiny.