Thoughts by Techxplorer

First spotted over at the blog of David Weinberger was a link to an interview he did with Jimmy Wales. The interview is entitled “Wikipedia Is Just the Start: An Interview With Jimmy Wales” and is hosted by Epicenter. The topics that they covered include:

• The debate about what should, and should not, be in the Wikipedia
• The social interaction, and codification, of principles on Wikipedia
• The transparency with which principles on content and other areas are discussed on Wikipedia
• The size of Wikipedia and if it is too inclusive about what content it will accept
• An offshoot of the Wikipedia, Wikia, and how it is hosting the Muppet Wiki
• The way knowledge is being sliced up in the online space and how it is all linking together

I found this interview to be very interesting, much more interesting than the interview I wrote about last month. The one thing that really interested me was towards the end of the interview when they started discussing the Muppet Wiki and the way it interacts with the Wikipedia. The idea that there is a Wiki that documents everything from a Muppet point of view, and that with a hyperlink can connect to other relevant information on other sites is very interesting.

For example the way content on the Wikipedia is organised. An example was raised about philosophy. The article on philosophy is quite large in Brittanica when compared to the same article in Wikipedia. This is primarily due to the fact that a “Wiki is not paper”. Meaning that it is possible to organise content without the restraints put on it by the medium of paper. The philosophy article on Wikipedia is able to link to other more specific articles.

Taking this idea further then it is possible to imagine that there is a web of information just waiting to be explored. Every little bit could potentially be linked to other little bits and create a web that ties it all together. It’s a rather exciting idea but one that also has me a little worried.

I wonder what the landscape of the Internet is going to be in 5, 10, 20, 30 years time and what impact it will have on our society and the way we shape our future.

Interesting times are coming I think.