Monday, June 04, 2007

Wiki-wisdom

Dom is commenting on the anti-Catholic cartoon in the Brisbane Times when he points out a disturbing cultural trend in today's public discourse. Its the all-knowing, all-wise, read-it-on-the-Internet, Wiki-itis.
Of course, it’s not just Catholicism that is subject to this phenomenon. The trend in public discourse these days is to shoot from the hip and to attack that which you have knowledge of based on what you’ve read at Wikipedia.
And from some of the issues Wikipedia has encountered with administrators embellishing their resumes, this seems to be the peak of self-centered delusional thinking. Perhaps we should help these "Thinking" folks come up with a motto for their bumper stickers.
- I Wiki, therefore I am.

- Whaddaya mean Wiki isn't 100% accurate?

- Of course I am who my profile says I am, just read the Wiki-article about me that I wrote?

- I wasn't wrong, my mind just had a buffer overflow.

- How could I know it was false, I just spew what I read on the Internet.
My dad had a couple of sayings that seem to fit also.

- Forgot to engage the brain before engaging the mouth.

- And quoting someone [could be Mark Twain or Winston Churchill, I am could not locate the exact quote], Believe only a fourth of what you read, a third of what you see and half of what you know.

No comments: