The quest for knowledge is getting harder
And if you could have “all” the information, in the palm of your hand, wherever you happened to be; how would you change the world? We’re getting closer, day by day. Albeit, with teeny tiny steps. But, the thought is there. Wikify the universe.
A geek with too much time available “before his flight left” has laid out the strategy for an off-line wiki reader. Nothing that wouldn’t be feasible with a small laptop and a few gigabytes of hard drive space. Grab the most recent “dump” and transfer it into a standalone database with a local web server to drive the whole affair. So far, so good. Even I could do this one.
Here’s where the whole thing gets gooey. The wikipedia is a database in flux. I’ve had the experience of carefully preparing some “nugget” of information that the rest of the world needs, made my edits and then found that another so-and-so had simply painted over my little corner of the universe. Rather than get into a war of meta-words, I’ve shaken my head and moved on to other things. I’m not alone.
Another person with some decent database skills has developed a search engine to track the efforts of the editing community. You can see who has done what, where, with searches based on topic, or IP address, or other grimy details. The evidence is in that there are highly placed scribblers out there, with their own personal axes to wield.
So, let’s return to the original premise. A portable guide to the universe. The only problem is that the data is in flux. What’s an intrepid learner to do? My 1961 copy of EB is no longer sufficient. I may have to throw in the towel (catching a babelfish in my drain at the same time) and accept that I’m running out of time in my quest to learn everything. Sort of sad, when you lay it out like that, isn’t it?
