[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is forever.

[Ray Saintonge]

Oldak Quill wrote:

>I think it is more to do with Wikipedia's ability to adapt and change
>with developing technology. If Encyclopedia Britannica had created a
>wiki back in 2000, Wikipedia may not exist and Britannica would have
>extended their lifetime by a few decades.
>
I've read that Encarta represented the first shoe to drop for EB; it  
could not easily adapt to that technology shift.  Now, with the benefit 
of hindsight this does not seem as though it would have been such a big 
change. 

The major paradigm shift lay in the enabling of two-way online 
communications.  The passive consumer could now also become a content 
producer.  This wasn't quite what ISP's had hoped for in an asymmetrical 
technology that assumed that the public would want to download far more 
than they would upload.  Their model also presumed that they would 
profit from also providing the content.

>As long as we are willing to embrace changes and developments (such
>as, at the moment, Wiktionary Z and Semantic MediaWiki) and don't
>object for reasons of familiarity, we should do fine.
>
One should not presume that any specific technology will be the one that 
leads to the big steps forward.

>On 16/07/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>The Encyclopaedia Britannica As We Know It has existed from, say, the
>>ninth edition (1889) to the present, and is probably in sharp decline
>>now. Let's say it's had about a 150-year life. I don't think it has
>>another twenty years in it. And I don't think the Boston Globe will
>>be available as smudgy ink on pulp paper delivered to front porches
>>in twenty years, either...
>>
>>The slide rule as we know it--as a working tool for engineers--lasted
>>from about 1860 into the 1970s... a bit over a century.
>>
>>Carbon paper... didn't really come into its own until the invention
>>of the typewriter... it's lasted a bit over a century, too.
>>
This technology is nowhere near as important as it once was, but its 
residual applications are likely to last for some considerable time yet.

>>"New media" though, have had a shorter life.
>>
>>The text adventure game: Colossal Cave, early 1970s, to about 1990
>>and the folding of Infocom. About twenty years?
>>
>>The soap opera: 1930 to present. The _radio_ soap opera, though,
>>obviously had a much shorter life. Thirty years?
>>
In a sense soap operas are much older.  In the 19th century many novels 
were first published in serial form.  This social phenomenon may change 
the medium that carries it, but is likely to remain in some form or other.

>>Wikipedia is much harder to predict, though, because it is changing
>>over time and will continue to do so. I'd give good odds that ten
>>years from now there will be a recognizable "website" on something
>>called the "Internet" named "Wikipedia" that will be an online
>>encyclopedia, but I wouldn't bet that its culture and policies will
>>be closely similar to those in existence today.
>>
It's importance as an encyclopedia is likely to fade long before its 
role in the development of open data.

Ec