wikipedia: history of computing

Admission: I first heard of Wikis on a CIA visit. I know they are apparently used extensively (but not to what degree). A couple of years later when I first heard of Open Encyc and Wikipedia at Stanford. I just met Ward and Jimmy within a week of each other in the past 2 months (Long Now and CHM and my own hosting of Ward who was down here for the Maker Faire (you guys know about this right?)). I like both of these guys. I too am impressed how far Jimmy's social phenom has gone (he now employs 3 people in the US alone, a recent IBM pub noted 2 people that IBM would know this is impressive).

I am very impressed what and how they have a mbutted. Like Usenet, participation is the key. But I am aware of their limitations. Controversies are interesting. We computer geeks clearly have different controversies than other humanists, some of that evident in our backgrounds (old mainframe types maintain a centrist view of data-info). I know the NSA's page is an incomplete half which could take some elaboration from Bamford. But it's not up to me to separate out their acronyms. I also just saw Peter Denning's CACM editorial against Wikipedia (that will make for an amusing dinner in Salinas ones of these days).

I think however, the future of Wikis (and blogs) won't be the high profile Wikipedias. I've encountered Wikis (without using the name) from travel sites to Star trek sites. Simple typos can be easily fixed (wrong quote attribution (my intro to Wikipedia) to wrong units feet English bias to meters).

Wikis are light weight compared to some of the artistically top-heavy web sites found by bureaucracies everywhere.

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