Wikiality
I’m no fan of reality, and I’m no fan of encyclopedias; I’ve said it before. Who is Britannica to tell me that George Washington had slaves? If I want to say he didn’t, that’s my right. And now, thanks to Wikipedia, it’s also a fact.
We should apply these principles to all information. All we need to do is convince a majority of people that some factoid is true. For instance, that Africa has more elephants today than it did 10 years ago. Now, I don’t know if that’s actually true, okay, but if it was true, boy, would that be a real blow to the environmentalists.
As usual, folks, the Bush administration is on the cutting edge of information management. While they’ve admitted that Saddam did not possess weapons of mass destruction, they’ve also insinuated he did possess weapons of mass destruction. Insinuations that have been repeated over and over again on cable news for the past three and a half years. And now, the result is 18 months ago, only 36 percent of Americans believed it, but 50 percent of Americans believe it now! Man, that number’s growing almost as fast as the population of African elephants, which is exploding, by the way. I heard that somewhere.
Now, what we’re doing is bringing democracy to knowledge. Now, the Blame Ignorance First crowd is going to say that something is either true or it isn’t, and it doesn’t matter how many people agree. But, if you had taken a class on astronomy before Galileo, and you said the earth went around the sun, you would have been flunked.
See, if you go against what the majority of people perceive to be reality, you’re the one who’s crazy! Nation, it’s time we use the power of our numbers for a real internet revolution. We’re going to stampede across the web like that giant horde of elephants in Africa. In fact, that’s where we can start. Find the page on elephants on Wikipedia and create an entry that says the number of elephants has tripled in the last six months. It’s the least we can do to save this noble beast.
Together, we can create a reality that we can all agree on: the reality we just agreed on.
We should apply these principles to all information. All we need to do is convince a majority of people that some factoid is true. For instance, that Africa has more elephants today than it did 10 years ago. Now, I don’t know if that’s actually true, okay, but if it was true, boy, would that be a real blow to the environmentalists.
As usual, folks, the Bush administration is on the cutting edge of information management. While they’ve admitted that Saddam did not possess weapons of mass destruction, they’ve also insinuated he did possess weapons of mass destruction. Insinuations that have been repeated over and over again on cable news for the past three and a half years. And now, the result is 18 months ago, only 36 percent of Americans believed it, but 50 percent of Americans believe it now! Man, that number’s growing almost as fast as the population of African elephants, which is exploding, by the way. I heard that somewhere.
Now, what we’re doing is bringing democracy to knowledge. Now, the Blame Ignorance First crowd is going to say that something is either true or it isn’t, and it doesn’t matter how many people agree. But, if you had taken a class on astronomy before Galileo, and you said the earth went around the sun, you would have been flunked.
See, if you go against what the majority of people perceive to be reality, you’re the one who’s crazy! Nation, it’s time we use the power of our numbers for a real internet revolution. We’re going to stampede across the web like that giant horde of elephants in Africa. In fact, that’s where we can start. Find the page on elephants on Wikipedia and create an entry that says the number of elephants has tripled in the last six months. It’s the least we can do to save this noble beast.
Together, we can create a reality that we can all agree on: the reality we just agreed on.
posted by Liz at 7:37 PM
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