Our in class discussion on the internet's effect on linear thinking immediately led me to remember the sort of experience I always have on one of my (and this course's) favorite web sites: Wikipedia. In this blog I'll attempt to explain how my average visit to Wikipedia.org is like getting sucked into an e-labyrinth, where I click links blindly and can't find the exit for hours on end.
When an individual chooses to enter Wikipedia, either to find out something they're dying to know, fact check a friend, edit an article or simply amuse themselves until their eyes bleed, they're given the option to search their topic in any number of languages, with the corresponding number of articles in each proudly displayed next to each. My constant choice is English, with over 2,983,000 articles. I know going into this that articles can be as varied as night and day, but that somehow they are literally ALL connected by the links on the page. You can go from reading about Julie Andrews to rotary saw in about 7 clicks. It reminds me of playing "apples to apples", a game of random disassociation.
Once on the home page, a slew of options already awaits you, and you can read about current events, this day in history, featured articles, or (my personal favorite) simply press "random article" on the side and see where it takes you. Here is truly where the labyrinth of internet-fueled non-linear thinking begins....
Say you get a page about Gustaf Komppa, a Finnish chemist whose page is about 2 paragraphs long and looks (note: looks) completely boring. I've only read the first sentence, my attention span quickly diminishing, and having decided it uninteresting, ready my mouse to click on something a bit better, the word Switzerland in bright blue letters! Now here's a real page. A long table of contents that I quickly skim means I can choose to "learn" about something cool like food and avoid something lame like the Napoleonic era. Next I can click a link about Gruyere, my favorite cheese, go to another page to learn how it's made, have my eye caught by another bright blue word ('French onion soup'), and off we go into the labyrinth of Wikipedia, and I can't even remember where I began.
I think about what sort of experience I may have with, say, and Encyclopedia Britannica; I think I'd be a lot more likely to either actually finish an article, or just shut the volume after getting bored instead of clicking links or turning pages. In any case, I know what good wikipedia can be when I need to do a bit of light research, but I also know how it lures me into its deathtrap, with no idea how long I'll be in there, how deep I'll go, or what exactly I will have gained once I'm done.
