Yesterday at a nostalgic conversation on how things have changed since our childhood, my friends and I (this too involves @JackSocialMed1a) were on an analytical spot. As a curious species, us human beings have searched for answers probably since the beginning of time. But don’t worry, I won’t go as far back as the time when only monks and a few rich people could read and write. Let’s start around the 60’s. The decade where door to door salesmen used to include a 26 volume encyclopedia. Good mothers would buy them up immediately for their kids to have a proper source of information, homework wise. Although, still, being the 60’s, a lot of information was censored.
Fast forward to the internet boom. Encyclopedias no longer needed to be dozens of heavy books where the information
they held was rendered obsolete a few days after. Encarta came to conquer students in a CD collection. However, you still needed to pay for information. I remember perfectly well. You were THE person if you had them at home.
And voilà! Today Wikipedia is the monarch in research. Granted, a lot of schools and other institutions highly recommend not to base papers or works on this source. Nonetheless, people access this huge database for free information.
All of this information, which most experts say it’s very accurate, is gathered thanks to crowd sourcing. Meaning thousands or may be even millions of people around the globe pitch in with either their knowledge or their expertise to enrich and feed Wikipedia. Basically, it’s almost free to have sources of information and free to look for it as someone with a curious mind.
What does this small timeline tell you? Information is more and more accessible on a daily basis, what’s more, you need not invest as much in obtaining it every second that goes by. And it’s all available at the click of your finger. Time, money and physical space. My my, how things evolve.