Jacob Christensen

Notes from the Outside of the Inside

The New York Review of Wikipedia

without comments

Nicholson Baker consideres the culture and poetry of Wikipedia in the latest issue of the New York Review:

Not only does Wikipedia need its vandals—up to a point—the vandals need an orderly Wikipedia, too. Without order, their culture-jamming lacks a context. If Wikipedia were rendered entirely chaotic and obscene, there would be no joy in, for example, replacing some of the article on Archimedes with this:

Archimedes is dead.

He died.

Other people will also die.

All hail chickens.

The Power Rangers say “Hi”

The End.

Even the interesting article on culture jamming has been hit a few times: “Culture jamming,” it said in May 2007, “is the act of jamming tons of cultures into 1 extremely hot room.”

It is probably suitable to make a reference to the Wikipedia entry about Nicholson Baker.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Written by Jacob Christensen

March 3rd, 2008 at 4:53 pm

Posted in Spare time

Tagged with ,