I used to take hyperlinks for granted.
That was before I stumbled across a machine that would reinvigorate my passion for link clicking, Wikipedia.
Like a can of Pringles, once you get started it can be hard to stop.
How often have I innocently looked up the definition of a long word (like Promulgation) and found myself hours later, reading up on the Greek philosophy.
Okay, so It's not like encyclopedias (these came before Wikipedia) haven't been around forever. So why then is there this sudden lust for knowledge or pseudo-enjoyment of scrolling through pages of information?
I'd hazard to say that the leading cause of wikipediaitis is procrastination.
Nothing beats doing work like not doing work.
Almost subconsciously we fall into infinite loops of wiki-surfing, fooled by the feeling of learning that we are actually being productive.
My prediction on the secondary reason for wikipediaitis is because we like having dumb facts to talk about. The good old "Did you know..." is a great convo starter, well at least in the I.T industry where new useless information is like a sweet perfume.
If I want to appear smarter than I really am, I'll just plug into Wikipedia for a quick top up of intellectual info then unleash on the uneducated masses.
Of course it has it's dangers, we've all heard the warnings about accuracy and misinformation, with University's not accepting Wikipedia as a valid reference for research.
But who cares?
If we had to wait for validated, approved and agreed information on everything, we'd be a bunch of waiting people, always waiting for things.
Of course there is great value in having multiple sources of information, and coming to our own conclusions. But you've got to start somewhere right?
Do you think we need to be more careful about not being wiki-washed?
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