They lived and laughed and loved and left

That I am a gadget-fiend is no great secret, and I certainly do think the iPod is the best invention since the home record-presser, but somehow I think New Yorkers take it a little further than I...

This is hardly a new idea, but I've been thinking about it a lot - is Wikipedia the anarchist realisation of the Library of Babylon? The Wiki might be the most perfect realisation of collaborative creation yet welded onto the infosphere, but only truly in the sense that its imperfections are its greatest strength. Imagine an archive of all knowledge, where each node of thought is nurtured by somebody who might vaguely know something. You search, and you find the information's not quite right. What do you do? Just change it. Make it better. No entry on what you're searching for? Well, buddy, go find out something and write a damn entry. If you want, you can change the entry on JFK to say nothing more than "CIA is jerks". It will change, right there and then - no login or approval, the wikipedia is your knowledge to create. 'course, if you write dumbass, somebody else will just change it back -- every page keeps a record of every change (controversial pages such as al q'aida having very long history pages), and the idiocy is usually swiftly dealt with. Worthwhile contributions, however, tend to hang around.

As the pages are lovingly tended by people who care about their topics, the information can be much more in-depth than anything the Brittanica might offer. Or at least more passionate. Little gardens of knowledge where flowers bloom in strange corners. Prankster weeds with destructive opinions may come in at the edges, but a mindful gardener knows how to keep things growing healthily.

It is a model for shared knowledge that maps perfectly onto the net as a whole, a concept of theoretical brilliance that actually kinda works in real life -- I've found myself going to the wikipedia not just to find the things your books of knowledge will rarely touch on in anything more than a "go ask a specialist" kind of way, from superstring theory to systems, but also the standard stuff, which is often passionately researched and meticulously hyperlinked (I like the entry on Joyce). And when it's not? Change it. Add something. Accept that knowledge is your responsibility as much as your right. Ain't that a nice, campfirey sort of thought?