Sometime in the near future, Wikipedia will absorb and back up all the information in the world even as it’s being created. It’s already doing a good job of it – and it’ll only get better.
And when that happens, we will be able to follow the latest news by simply subscribing to the ‘Recent changes’ page of Wikipedia - which will hopefully come with RSS feeds, and tags to help us find the stream(s) we are interested in.
Encyclopaedias will then stop being the long-term by-products of the gathering, analysing and reporting of news. Instead, news will become the by-product of creating an encyclopaedia.
Which, probably, is the way it should be.
Jul 26, 2008
Iqbal Mohammed is Head of Innovation & Strategy at a digital innovation agency serving the DACH and wider European markets. He is the winner of the WPP Atticus Award for Best Original Published Writing in Marketing & Communication.
You can reach him via email or Twitter.
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