The corollary to "Goodbye, Encarta"--unfortunately--is "Hello, Wikipedia." Wikipedia's editorial game-plan means that virtually anyone can be a subject-matter expert by simply asserting himself or herself as an expert, which means authoritative knowledge is a wide-open relativistic egalitarian enterprise. While I encourage the notion of equality (in opportunity), I cannot embrace the notion of equality in terms of intellect, expertise, and authority. If everyone is an expert, what happens to unimpeachable knowledge? What happens to absolute authority? What happens to truth?
The corollary to "Goodbye, Encarta"--unfortunately--is "Hello, Wikipedia." Wikipedia's editorial game-plan means that virtually anyone can be a subject-matter expert by simply asserting himself or herself as an expert, which means authoritative knowledge is a wide-open relativistic egalitarian enterprise. While I encourage the notion of equality (in opportunity), I cannot embrace the notion of equality in terms of intellect, expertise, and authority. If everyone is an expert, what happens to unimpeachable knowledge? What happens to absolute authority? What happens to truth?
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