The Wikipedia Dilemma

Sometimes, usually after marking my umpteenth ‘Wikipedia essay’ in a row, I want to give up on Western civilization. But then I remember I’ve already done that. Kind of leaves me with a dilemma.

What is a Wikipedia essay, you ask? It’s an essay that assembles facts and binds them together with quotes from other people. Sometimes there are pictures. (If I allowed it there would be short mpegs of the student and perhaps even an mp3 or two providing a soundtrack to the assigned topic, “Describe the relationship between the values presented in television content and those found in television advertising.” The main source is usually Wikipedia along with some web sites. The theme is either not there or takes the form of “That is why ___________ is a good thing.”

I’m tempted to say the internet and its cacophonous array of sources of highly varying quality is to blame. But then I just have to think back to undergrad and I can remember most of the students I knew were this lazy then as well. There was one guy in my Moral Theology class that managed to get an 80+ in the course after hiring someone in his residence (an economics major with a strong predilection for toking up before every exam) to write all six of his theological book reports for him. The priest who taught the class never caught him. Moral Theology! Some people really have no fear, do they?

Students can become accredited, as Jane Jacobs notes in her book Dark Age Ahead, without truly learning. And I can’t put all the blame on Wikipedia. In fact, the Wikipedia project has to be admired for its oddly workable collaborative structure as people in the know have the opportunity to write or add to existing entries on subjects that are their specialty. (And, no, I’ve never contributed to the site myself, being a poet and occasional TV show host and therefore possessing no native knowledge of my own.) Sure, there are bugs in the system. Knowledge may be altered as it is filtered through so many minds. I guess then it becomes no-ledge.

But the internet isn’t the first time in history humans have had to wrestle with the quality and diversity of available knowledge. There have been catastrophic moments such as when the Library of Alexandria was destroyed by fire (possibly after some librarian tried to ‘shush’ the nearest invader). Countless manuscripts were lost all at once, leaving us with a less than comprehensive view of things such as ancient history and ancient drama.

The collapse of Rome led to what many term the ‘Dark Ages’ before the consolidation of medieval European cultures. In that interim, many monasteries became the temporary homes for Greek and Roman manuscripts which were copied and recopied over the decades and centuries. What was also happening was that the Arabic world had managed to retain some of the knowledge of Greece and Rome and add to it during a magnificent flowering of scientific and philosophical investigation.

But nothing remains the same over long periods such as those. Bart Ehrman, in his book Misquoting Jesus, documents the changes – intentional and unintentional – in Bible manuscripts over the centuries. Just as disturbing is that there are many manuscripts from that period that lie still unread and untranslated in locations throughout Europe – painstakingly copied manuscripts that are bound in volumes containing completely unlike manuscripts and then marked along the binding with the name of only one of the manuscripts, or perhaps labeled with the name of a manuscript that isn’t even contained in that particular bound volume. Who knows what’s been lost in there, just as no one knows what knowledge we are losing in the plethora of internet sources that overwhelm some of the more substantive websites.

But I’m not going to tell you that this could lead to the fall of civilization. It might, and it might not. The point here is that knowledge is a fragile thing. It is conditional and fleeting. Languages change and we lose the sense of the past. We are not building a pyramid of ideas climbing ever higher to the sky. We are jumping from one ice floe to the next, hoping it will last long enough to carry us to another patch of ice in what we’re starting to think is a global warming of the cool intellect.

The point is not whether or not our civilization will end. It will. It might not have anything to do with our inability to transmit what we know to future generations. It might have everything to do with a surplus of pandas or a shortage of margarita umbrellas. I just think you should start thinking about what books you would like to preserve and take with you when it all goes. Meanwhile, I’ll jump to another student essay floating in the light at my desk and hope the argument isn’t too thin to support my heavy thoughts.