The Encyclopedia Brittanica used to have an exhaustive amount of biographic entries on important members (at that time, and to certain editors) of the Church of England, and some were longer than those about people we would view now as much more important. If the New Web Encyclopedias wish to remain relevant in the present, and continue to allow mass editing, they may be stuck with that kind of thinking - what's interesting and relevant is not uniform by far, and thus the anime trumps the classic. I'm sure they're attempting to control the future of their relevancy, as well, but that's not really up to them, is it? The best part about the whole new world of multiple realities as definitive references is: we can access the ones that we generally don't agree with and find kernels of wisdom. Or maybe just more long entries on anime.

I think the authors are just dead wrong. I work in all the behavioral sciences---economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, and biology. This would have been impossible even ten years ago. I can do now in minutes what used to take me weeks---look up articles, get my RA to go to the library and make copies, bring the copies to my work area. As a result, I could only deal with a very limited amount of information.

Also, if I want to talk to an expert in any field, I can email the person and get an answer in a matter of hours, or days at most. It used to be impossible to talk to experts outside your personal circle of researchers.

I use the Internet so intensively that when I am out of Internet service (e.g., on the road), I feel crippled, because I cannot immediately get the information I want.

This is the most exciting time ever for scientists to live. Not only do we have access to information, we have much more efficient ways to disseminate and store the information. Long live the information revolution!

Wiki ushers in the age of willing reality into existence. W/o credible peer review, truth and accuracy is whatever you claim it to be.

I know I'll be thinking about this for days. Thank you :)

The problematic unexamined usage here is "we." I love knowledge, but have been deeply disappointed ever since I found out as a six-year-old that school wasn't a place where you learned what you were excited to know, but a place where they warehoused you and made you follow routines regardless of their value. Some few were worthwhile--learning the multiplication tables, for instance, but most of my teachers were ignorant and taught by rote, not by understanding.

Now I use wikipedia happily. I am not worried about inaccuracies, because I have educated myself enough to know when what I am reading is off. Wikipedia is plenty accurate for basic information on subjects I haven't studied.

Note the "I": There is no society-wide determination for what constitutes knowledge. Knowledge is a hard-earned personal achievement, and requires plenty of skepticism.

I agree completely with the researcher. Getting access to information is hundreds of times faster, and much more is available. There is no "middle of nowhere" anymore as far as obtaining information. On a field trip to Antarctica or Svalbard? No problem, keep on researching for that other paper in your spare time.

There is another aspect to this. Knowledge is more than a collection of facts; it is also the concepts in the minds of the users. Without these concepts, it is useless. Planck's constant means nothing to nearly everyone in the world; very few have constructed the necessary mental framework. Yet it is an essential part of understanding the most significant advance in physics. A knowledge data base must support and encourage the development of concepts. Although a formal education may be essential, education really works best when the individual take over. The internet enables this far better than any other data base.

This month, someone wrote a Wikipedia article about the place I worked for eight and a half years. It was riddled with inaccuracies. The Wiki writer contacted me, and I, along with another informed soul, have been painstakingly giving him more information so that he can add to the list of publications we produced, fix dates that were inaccurate and make it a more appropriate piece for something that people, rightly or wrongly, have come to use like the Britannica or the World Book. It's incumbent for those "in the know" to fix these things quickly, lest the inaccuracies fester.

Coming from the humanities, I completely agree with Herbert Gintis. In one of my three jobs (gotta make a living) -- the one I am most passionate about -- I am a translator. The internet has revolutionized literary translation for those who know how to use it. To take one tiny example: an obscure reference to "the Poet" and a snatch of Latin that would have taken weeks to track down pre-internet (probably not worth the time spent) can be accurately identified as a reference to a passage in Virgil's Georgics, and translated from the original Latin with the aid of a fine Latin linguistic database run out of Tufts University, all literally within a few minutes. Multiply that minor instance by a couple thousand over the course of the year, and you have a paradigm shift.

In other words, the internet is much more than blogs and Wikipedia, as entertaining and occasionally useful as those may be. By putting multiple reference sources and huge quantities of the textual inheritance of humanity within simultaneous reach, it makes new forms of research possible.

Have you SEEN the new library at Alexandria and their amazing storage capacity?

The book title should return to Alexandria.

"Traditionally credentialed cultural gatekeepers" are not being "drowned out." Wikipedia is not "a world without any established truths at all" and "cranks who care enough to make the biggest stink on a subject" are not "the ones to have the final word on it."

No one who has any real familiarity with wikipedia would say these things. True, it is prone to inaccuracies, but surprisingly less than one might imagine. And the official mandate that articles be sourced with (traditional) reliable sources is largely followed. The footnotes and bibliographies in the wikipedia entry for a given subject are often an invaluable first source of information on it.

There have always been legions of morons and cranks willing and eager to believe bullshit, as well as intelligent people who know how to exercise discernment. The internet has provided the former with a new means of preoccupation, while significantly empowering the latter.