Monday 28 March 2011

meritocracy or redirected from micro-publishing

Though the temptation was not so easily accessible back in my college days, no one has ever been able to explain to me the academic prejudice against Wikipedia, albeit relaxed somewhat recently. Specialists always have hegemony in their respective domains, and it is as if it were fear for an oligarchy of nerds or fans (there must be a Greco-phone word for government by freaks and geeks)—however benevolent or enlightened—or a turning-away from knowledgeable and vetted sources.
Nonetheless, Wikipedia has persevered, growing both as an institution and a community. I had missed this feature before, but opening up the menus in the marginalia, one is treated to all sorts of undaunted scholarly applications, like Book Creator.
The umbrella-topic structure of Wikipedia articles, strung along in a daisy-chain for reference,
I believe would be perfectly suited to drafting a study-aid or especially to supplement a travel-guide, something a bit more in depth that branches out, like a Choose your own Adventure book but within a framework and not as boundless as the open internet. One’s handiwork can be saved and formatted in a variety of ways, and then e-mailed for distribution. With just a few extra steps, one’s books can be viewed and saved on any tablet device, ready to be quoted, reworked and re-imagined.  It would nicely personalize one's vacation itinerary, modularity, and saving the discovery for the trip and not the exhausted invention of the research and planning.