Wikipedia

In today's world, anything at any time is knowable. If you have a smart phone, you can look up virtually any statistic or obscure fact on Wikipedia or google in a matter of seconds.

Anyone (who hasn't been banned) can contribute to Wikipedia. Although this allows for false information and pranksters, Wikipedia has a team of vigilant readers and editors who can quickly address these issues and fix the entries. Even with all this potential for abuse, Wikipedia is remarkably accurate; almost as accurate as Britannica.

Levinson asks "does Wikipedia make libraries unnecessary?" Former secretary of state Colin Powell claims that we don't need books anymore because of search engines and Wikipedia. I think that he is going a little too far saying that we don't need ANY books anymore. However, my need for books while doing research has gone down tremendously in the past few years. Over my entire college career, I've only needed to get a handful of books from the library. I was able to get almost all the information I needed online.

I think Wikipedia is a great site with a terrific format. If you need to know something about virtually any topic at all, Wikipedia is a good start. I can't see a site like Wikipedia dying anytime soon, and I plan on continuing to use it on a regular basis.

Here's a video with Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, talking more about Wikipedia and what makes it so special.