Oh, you wonderful fellow residents of J-Land, you know everything. I made my silly quizzes, such as the entry below this one, filled with little tidbits from my own memory, and the collective memories of all of us together, fills the gaps.
I made lots of errors in my last lines quiz, and people who found them put corrections in the comments section. When I make a statement that I do not remember something, someone else remembers and comments or emails me.
It is really great that our collective memory is so much better than one individual one. That is what makes Wikipedia so fantastic. Here is an encyclopaedia that everyone contributes to. When you have an update or correction to an article in Wikipedia, you enter it, and it become part of the encyclopaedia.
That is how I found the grand Ferris wheel in London. I had looked up the history of Ferris wheels, my last name being Ferris, and found not only the story of the original one in Chicago, but, in an added comment, the fact that the world's largest Ferris wheel was in London. Then I looked that up, and found pictures of it, its construction, and a grand panorama of London, taken from the top of the wheel. I'll bet Britannica nor World Book have not included them.
On the internet I have looked up all kinds of obscure facts that I could not have found in a month's prowling of the local library. I find lyrics of long forgotten songs, facts about bugs, and how snakes mate. I can name the weeds in the garden, stars in the big dipper, and the date of next full moon (October 17).
Hail, internet, Wikipedia, and fellow journallers.
PS I forgot to mention, I start getting comments within MINUTES of posting an entry. Thanks, Sylvia, Deb/
6 comments:
Keep up the quizes i really enjoy them:)
Deb
I love searching the net. Surprising how many obscure facts you find on there. Take care.
Sylvia x
I like the idea of Wikipedia, and have visited there, but I'm a little wary. If anyone can edit any entry in any way they please, how do you know the collective information is accurate?
I love the lyrics thing and have spent hours tracking down the words to songs I remember only in snippets--ones I didn't think I would ever find. I have a personal songbook filed away in My Documents so I can sing along whenever I please. Also a personal poetry anthology, with just the poems I like. Trouble is you can spend hours and even days on this stuff, while you get sidetracked along the way, taking forks in the road you never knew existed, leading to more interesting stuff. But it's fascinating.
It's fun, isn't it?! If I have trouble locating a tidbit, all I have to do is ask and someone finds what I was unable to.
Yes, I remember how tedious it used to be to research things that are a snap now. For example, I had six years' worth of TV Guides to look stuff up in! Now I can just hit TV Tome and IMDB.
To answer someone's concern about Wikipedia, as I understand it, the history of an entry is stores and available, and inaccurate or controversial entries tend to be redone by people who care. By the time people are willing to leave the entry alone, errors tend to be eradicated and accomodations made to get to something people can agree on. I've seen minor inaccuracies, but by and large the system works.
Karen
Yes, it is so amazing that we truly have the world at our fingertips now. I know tecchnology has it's down sides, but how wonderful to have lived in a time when computers went from a huge room full of electronics too complicated for the average man, to a box and a keyboard on our own desks! Margo
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