Is it a Wiki World Yet?

William L. Hosch, the Britannica mathematics and computer sciences editor, uses Paul Di Filippo's "Wikiworld," one of the stories in Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge, as a springboard for thoughts on Wikipedia, posted on Britannica Blog:

"So is Wikipedia on its way to becoming Isaac Asimov’s Encyclopedia Galactica (or for younger readers, Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) or will it be abandoned as Web 3.0 arrives? (Frankly, a shared conundrum for all general reference works, including Encyclopaedia Britannica, is how to evolve in the coming world of Web 3.0 interactivity.) Maybe reading is obsolete and experts are old-fashioned and elitist. Then again, maybe we haven’t quite reached the world of Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron. At least that’s what I take from reading Larry Sanger, the ex-cofounder of Wikipedia, who has begun extolling the virtues of expert opinion over popular consensus."

Interesting discussion follows.