Now that Wikipedia is perfect, 3 opportunities for your institution to shine

Posted: January 19th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Inspiration | Tags: , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Daily Disney - Hollywood Studios Balloons at Dusk (Explored)
Photo by Joe Penniston on Flickr.

Not too long ago, while reading The Ascent of Money, I had to refresh my memory about the events leading to the French revolution. The Wikipedia entry on the subject made me sad. Now I had to read two books. (The article alone is over 3,300 words long.)

I believe that on their way to perfection and completeness, Wikipedia is offering us at least 3 opportunities to shine: brevity, humour and passion.

1. Brevity

Due to its desire to tell the full story, Wikipedia is quickly becoming unusable for anything other than scholarly research. The length, depth and level of detail of many entries greatly surpasses the information needs if you just want to know a bit about the topic. The article on the causes of the French revolution is not at all a very long entry, yet already some thousand words longer than the average TED talk.

There is another way, which offers an opportunity to institutions with knowledge and creativity: videos. Take the Open University’s 60-Second Adventures in Thought about Schrödinger’s cat. In 81 seconds they manage to tell basically the same story as the 2,500-word Wikipedia entry. Plus, it made me laugh.

Most people don’t want to know about Schrödinger’s cat at all. And even if they might, it’s more likely they’ll start with the movie. Can’t get enough? Wikipedia’s there to tell you everything, but by then you’ve already become a scholar of parallel universes and quantum mechanics. Read the rest of this entry »