The Wiki Truth
In the past, the big fat encyclopaedia on the bookshelf was
THE source of information. A short, explanatory text that held the
unquestionable truth. Now, there is Wikipedia, where the truth is
formed by 1000 opinions. “This online ‘wisdom of the crowd’ is
turning the truth into something transient,” Kyra van Ineveld says.
She asked Wikipedians for the pages that had been changed
most often. Printed on her own black-and-white printer, but bound
to form a classic encyclopaedia, the top five of these pages form
a series of impressive reference books. Bizarrely thick books,
some measuring thirty centimeter; on Obama, the Catholic church,
the war in Gaza, global warming or ‘race and intelligence’.
As you browse you can see the shifts and changes in the
explanations: nothing is a fickle as the truth.