Friday 25 November 2005

WIKI

WIKI is given to mean What I Know Is......... And the biggest embodiment of a wiki is Wikipedia, a "public good", an encyclopedia written and owned by the masses.

This concept of a public good goes way back to the start of the Internet culture and the gift economy. Unfortunately you guys aren't paying me to give you a lecture on the culture and history of the web (occasionally I turn a shilling in such pursuits) so here's a freebie curtesy of John Naughton who found it elsewhere. An aside - if you want to read one book that is a great read and explains how we got here in the wired world grab a copy of Naughton's "Brief history of the future", one of the finest books of the genre and written so damn well I'd kill for a fraction of his skill - except that as a "sort of" Buddhist I won't kill and as an employee of the Technology faculty of the Open University killing a guy that high up in the faculty may be a bad career move.

Anyway - I say that a lot by the way - John has found a super-cool way of searching Wikipedia because that baby is getting so big.

LumRiX is based on some sort of clever doings or other but let the propeller-heads worry about that, it's just very quick and that's the other thing that wiki means :-)

7 careful considerations:

kat said...

Blimey! It is quick.

bluefluff said...

It certainly is, Kat! Like a sort of better-designed predictive text: it came up with the results of my test serach before I'd finished typing them.

Nice find, Nog :-)

Nogbad said...

Kat - not something I want shouted from the rooftops! :-)

Bluefluff - Not my find, Naughton is a guru (I hope they keep me on the books :-))

kat said...

LOL

Nogbad said...

Kat - you tinker! Let's take this to your blog as I have a reputation that's already trashed :-)

Anonymous said...

Hey! I've just added my first bit of knowledge to WIKI! I figured as I'd been using it for the last 6months it was time to add to it.

I've added FOTCR into the dictionary of internet acronyms.

Go look it up!

Echomouse said...

Now that's very cool. Thanks for that link :)