untangling_the_web

DOClD: 4046925
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However, Britannica today (and by extension any other encyclopedia) is very
different from Britannicas of the past. In thinking about this controversy, I was
reminded of a passage in The Fatal Shore, Robert Hughes' masterpiece about the
founding of modern Australia. Hughes writes about one transported convict, Thomas
Palmer, who finished his sentence and went into business with his close friend John
Boston." Neither man had much business experience, "but they possessed a
singular advantage : the only encyclopedia in the colony. With it, they taught
themselves to make beer. Then they learned how to make soap. Next they looked
up 'ship' and, after some trial and error, contrived to build a somewhat cranky but
adequate small vessel for trading stores to Norfolk Island." [emphasis addedf 9 Their
lone encyclopedia probably made it possible for these men not merely to survive but
to thrive in this perilous new world.
The modern encyclopedia is very different from the encyclopedias of earlier
centuries, which bear rather more resemblance to the Wikipedia than to the current
Britannica in that the older encyclopedias were not only "sources of knowledge" but
also "practical" how-to guides and almanacs. In other ways, however, encyclopedias
are and always were quite different from the Wikipedia. They have always relied
upon paid experts whose work is reviewed and edited. And they have always been
for-profit enterprises.
Wikipedia relies almost entirely upon individual users to create, edit, maintain, and
often argue about its entries. It is free and carries no advertising; it is a nonprofit and
has a tiny staff.
~ For practical purposes, Wikipedia has no physical limits: it could conceivably
continue to expand indefinitely, something no print encyclopedia could ever
do.
~ Its content is "open," that is, almost any topic can be included; traditional
encyclopedias generally do not include "how-to" instructions ("How to draw a
diagram with Microsoft Word"), new or transient popular culture ("24: The TV
Series"), or breaking stories ("JonBenet Ramsey").
~ Wikipedia's heavy emphasis on current events and popular culture bespeak a
prejudice of the present at the expense of the important: it favors the
fashionable over the important.
7aln what must be one of the most profound examples of friendship since Damon and Pythias , Boston
actually traveled voluntarily with his wife to New South Wales to "keep Palmer company." Anyone
who has read about a sea voyage from England to Australia at that time knows the trip in and of itself
was a major sacr ifice. Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore (New York: Vintage Books , 1988), 180.
79 Hughes, 180.
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