On 7/15/06, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
Barring a total catastropic collapse of civilization (and possibly even then), it's likely that some copy of some portion of some version of Wikipedia will survive somewhere, given its wide dissemination. Such a thing will likely be an imporant resource for future historians / archeologists / anthropologists / etc. researching human culture of the early 21st century.
However, in such a scenario, the surviving Wikipedia would be merely a "dead" historical document, albeit a massive one with many alternative versions.
Or, is it the belief here that a "living" Wikipedia, still being actively updated and open to such updates from the general public, will continue to exist for centuries to come?
Since you asked. I think Wikipedia will continue to exist in pretty much its current form for 5 years. It will continue to be useful and referred to for ~10 years. 20 years from now, it will have been totally superseded and no one will give a shit - it will not interest future historians, archeologists or anthropologists, any more than archives of usenet from the early 1990s interest today's historians, archeologists or anthropologists.
I'm ok with that.
Steve