a quote i found

amidst the bajillion comments on nick carr’s post on the amorality of web 2.0, which i finally got around to reading today, and within the comments of which a full-blown discussion on the merits of wikipedia emerges

i’ve actually been amused by a few diderot quotes lately as i have been tripping over and then looking for stuff on old school information overload, which i think is fascinating, perspective-giving stuff, as history should be.

and i’ve been thinking of using my blog to save quotes, so here ya go.
i might end up keeping them off the main page eventually, but we’ll see.

—-

Go further, and require each of them to make a contribution: you will see how many things are still missing, and you will be obliged to get the assistance of a large number of men who belong to different classes, priceless men, but to whom the gates of the academies are nonetheless closed because of their social station. All the members of these learned societies are more than is needed for a single object of human science; all the societies together are not sufficient for a science of man in general.

Denis Diderot (~1777) Encyclop??die

One Response to “a quote i found”

  1. kynthia Says:

    as a note: i wish there was an easy way to reference Just the comments that talked about wikipedia, and that makes me think about the mixed blessing and horror that is a page full of comments.
    why can’t they be grouped together into threads, or otherwise associated with one another so that people would be more easily discouraged against saying the same flipping things over and over just because they don’t read other people’s thoughts (and sometimes they can’t really be expected to – it can take hours!) before throwing out their two cents?
    hell, what if it even worked so that you could write your kneejerk reaction just to vent, and then it would list the relevant comments before you submit the post, like an enhanced preview mode. then you could skim those comments to see if you want to take anything back or address any points you overlooked. that would be fun.

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