Life is better now ACW (After the Creation of Wikipedia)
I still recall the bad ol' days way back BW (Before Wikipedia). Perhaps some of you do too. Those dark ages lasted from approximately the dawn of time which is to say 4.54 billion years ago AW (According to Wikipedia) to AD 2001 which is the Beginning of the Wikipedia Era. Yes, I still recall those days when genuine experts were easy to tell from LBAs (Laymen with Broadband Access). And that was not good.
Like you, I prefer it now. I am expert in whatever I claim I am. As are you. And that is provably better for humanity, after all: scientia potentia est, (which is what Francis Bacon said, AW). Nowadays you can quiz me on my expertise and I can tell you anything you like provided we are not face to face and I am within range of a wi-fi access point. For, following the beginning of the Wikipedia Era, I am an autoqualified expert in everything. So also are you. You can tell me anything. Even when I think I am well versed in something by old BW methods of learning, all the while you are more knowledgeable than me because we are not face to face and you are within range of a wi-fi access point. And that is a good state of affairs. Perhaps that is why my doctor insists on diagnosing me now by email. At 3am. From India. Hmm. He is just 17 years of age and has a not too good standard of English. Anyway.
Wikipedia, for those of you who are mere LBAs and not experts (as I am), is a web repository manned by panels of experts like myself that diligently siphon out copious false and anecdotal information to leave the laypeople, with just a little false and anecdotal information. From this verified factitious information we now form our news stories, our legal cases (in conjunction with Facebook), our medical diagnoses and our forum commentaries. In the old days BW, women and men had to gain knowledge from elders or in unusual cases from books which were made from the crually harvested pulp of trees and whose texts had to be painstakingly verified by people whose cleverness had in turn to be verified by people who could spell and punctuate with horrible aplomb. That proved costly and took a long time when seeking information. And you had in some cases to be face to face. Moreover, others could by that very time lag, determine that you were not in fact an expert in the mating habits of howler monkeys (from the Family Atelidae in the Parvorder Platyrrhini as we experts better know them). And that was not good. Now all the universe's knowledge is onlineified. And that is most definitely good.
Today, in the modern era, Wikipedia is the de facto provider of education across the broadband-using universe. It is the replacement for schools and higher education providers. And much cheaper and efficient it is too. There remains no need to educate yourself through these anachronistic institutions. Wikipedia does away with the need for them.
Pity the old ones that lived BW when the process of cutting and pasting reams of data (with wiki links lazily included) into a work email, a medical diagnosis email, a legal plea bargain or - dare I say - discussion forum was met with shrugs and moans of "So what, you just copied all that out". Now, however, we can gasp at the wonderfully indiscriminate deployment of such vast hearsay-based factual forests.
The modern era is truly the best of times. Which was incidentally also the name of a 1981 comedy film directed by Don Mischer and starring Crispin Glover. And Nicolas Cage. Who is 47 and whose first movie was Brubaker which is a film from 1980 about a prison in distress where the Warden Henry Brubaker (who was played by Robert Redford) attempted to reform the system.
There now. What else would you like to know? Oh hang on, my reception bars are dropping...
I still recall the bad ol' days way back BW (Before Wikipedia). Perhaps some of you do too. Those dark ages lasted from approximately the dawn of time which is to say 4.54 billion years ago AW (According to Wikipedia) to AD 2001 which is the Beginning of the Wikipedia Era. Yes, I still recall those days when genuine experts were easy to tell from LBAs (Laymen with Broadband Access). And that was not good.
Like you, I prefer it now. I am expert in whatever I claim I am. As are you. And that is provably better for humanity, after all: scientia potentia est, (which is what Francis Bacon said, AW). Nowadays you can quiz me on my expertise and I can tell you anything you like provided we are not face to face and I am within range of a wi-fi access point. For, following the beginning of the Wikipedia Era, I am an autoqualified expert in everything. So also are you. You can tell me anything. Even when I think I am well versed in something by old BW methods of learning, all the while you are more knowledgeable than me because we are not face to face and you are within range of a wi-fi access point. And that is a good state of affairs. Perhaps that is why my doctor insists on diagnosing me now by email. At 3am. From India. Hmm. He is just 17 years of age and has a not too good standard of English. Anyway.
Wikipedia, for those of you who are mere LBAs and not experts (as I am), is a web repository manned by panels of experts like myself that diligently siphon out copious false and anecdotal information to leave the laypeople, with just a little false and anecdotal information. From this verified factitious information we now form our news stories, our legal cases (in conjunction with Facebook), our medical diagnoses and our forum commentaries. In the old days BW, women and men had to gain knowledge from elders or in unusual cases from books which were made from the crually harvested pulp of trees and whose texts had to be painstakingly verified by people whose cleverness had in turn to be verified by people who could spell and punctuate with horrible aplomb. That proved costly and took a long time when seeking information. And you had in some cases to be face to face. Moreover, others could by that very time lag, determine that you were not in fact an expert in the mating habits of howler monkeys (from the Family Atelidae in the Parvorder Platyrrhini as we experts better know them). And that was not good. Now all the universe's knowledge is onlineified. And that is most definitely good.
Today, in the modern era, Wikipedia is the de facto provider of education across the broadband-using universe. It is the replacement for schools and higher education providers. And much cheaper and efficient it is too. There remains no need to educate yourself through these anachronistic institutions. Wikipedia does away with the need for them.
Pity the old ones that lived BW when the process of cutting and pasting reams of data (with wiki links lazily included) into a work email, a medical diagnosis email, a legal plea bargain or - dare I say - discussion forum was met with shrugs and moans of "So what, you just copied all that out". Now, however, we can gasp at the wonderfully indiscriminate deployment of such vast hearsay-based factual forests.
The modern era is truly the best of times. Which was incidentally also the name of a 1981 comedy film directed by Don Mischer and starring Crispin Glover. And Nicolas Cage. Who is 47 and whose first movie was Brubaker which is a film from 1980 about a prison in distress where the Warden Henry Brubaker (who was played by Robert Redford) attempted to reform the system.
There now. What else would you like to know? Oh hang on, my reception bars are dropping...
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