User:Ejm634/reflection page

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As a part of my court-ordered rehabilitation from monodisciplinarity, I have to write a "reflection" extolling the virtues of wikipedia. It goes a little sumpin' like 'dis:

I think Wikipedia is going to change the face of human knowledge. It sounds a bit melodramatic and McLuhan-istic, but I honestly feel that way. Maybe not in the state that it’s in now, but eventually the applications of this type of technology could be limitless. The digitization of public records such as obituaries and the like would increase the speed at which people can research anything. The public’s ability to edit articles pertaining to any iota of information adds a new perspective to that information that can’t even be approached by the esoteric and limited process of encyclopedic writing. On the other hand, open sourced information that falls into the wrong hands can be a dangerous tool. Well, all of that was beside the point. What the point should be really is how Wikipedia has helped me learn about interdisciplinarity. One might argue that Wikipedia is interdisciplinary simply because of the sheer volume of subjects it contains, and I would certainly agree with that. One might also make the argument that Wikipedia is interdisciplinary because it broadens the mind by making these sheer volumes of subject matter available and I wouldn't fight hard against that thought process either. However, I don’t think Wikipedia directly corresponds to interdisciplinarity itself, but more on the collaborative effort of gaining and creating accessible knowledge. Nothing about Wikipedia encourages those who write articles to step outside of their own disciplines (except maybe the random article button) and/or combine different disciplines. What makes Wikipedia so great and so innovative is the ability for users from all across the world with varying levels of education and opinions to write about and read about any topic that someone desires to create an article for. With that kind of open ended access the perspectives of opposite camps can be made clear, clearer than media or news can portray. From there a form of scholarly or intellectual empathy can take place… Shortly after that everyone will go sing around a campfire, have S’mores and tell ghost stories.

I never said it was gonna be great. What more do you want me to say? It’s 5:30 in the morning.