Wikidemics

I know everyone comments on Wikipedia. Most are philosophically opposed to the database. I guess I am as well, though I certainly can't deny that I frequently use it. It works if you're looking for a quick summary of something, or even as a familiarization with a term.

But wikipedia is a good discussion springboard for a broader question of modern academics.

In the Middle Ages, with the monastical origins of modern universities and the pursuit of academics, this pursuit was a blend of mystery and logic. Fundamentally deductive, this pursuit involved scholars with limited information on their hands using first principles and observed truth to reach new knowledge.

In short, I believe that modern academics were founded on a balance that naturally favored reasoning and first principles to information.

Somewhere recently I think we must have hit a point of inflection (in the calculus sense). Postmodern academics, for lack of a better term, was born when academia began to favor a preponderance of information. And now, with the internet, among other resources, we have a gross overabundance of information.

The problem is that now, for the weight of the information, knowledge and truth seem to increasingly suffer, or perhaps become even irrelevant. (E.G., Wiki-ism)

Strange that the beautiful work of centuries of academia has built an information Tower of Babel. And now nothing is clear, and nothing makes sense, and we have lost the foundation we first built on.