MyDiscovery: Encyclopedia cures insomnia

Can’t sleep? I want to tell you of my discovery today: An encyclopedia is a bad read. Go read any of the bestselling ones. Take your pick: Americana, Britannica, Columbia, Encarta, Wikipedia? They’re all the same: uninteresting, unexciting, dreary, dull. Open to any page, try to read, and pretty soon you’re fast asleep!

I find it mind-numbing. Why do most encyclopedias make the most boring reading? Let me quote myself from my latest essay on creative thinking (for more details, see my ‘PS,’ March 24, frankahilario.com) pertinent to the encyclopedias:

‘PS’ – noon today, when I was trying to collect notes on the acronym, I thought of Sony’s PlayStation and, surfing, clicked on Wikipedia. And now, here is a lesson in creative thinking from my Serendipity X and their Wikipedia on the subject of Sony’s PlayStation (PS). The head note on the PlayStation section says (en.wikipedia.org):

‘The current version of this article or section is written in an informal style and with a personally invested tone. It reads more like a story than an encyclopedia entry.’

Very funny. What Wikipedia does not encourage is exactly what I do encourage because that’s how I write: personal, fervent.

So, according to the watchdogs of Wikipedia, an encyclopedia entry should be written in a staid, no-feelings-seen-no-bias-shown manner. Boring. That’s why nobody reads the encyclopedia. And yes, I now understand Wikipedia doesn’t want to be read either! That is to say, like all the other encyclopedia makers, they don’t want their sentences to be relaxed; they are not trying to impart knowledge on the reader – they are merely trying to impress him with their erudition.

And all the time I thought Wikipedia was innovative?!

Since encylopedias were the reliable references in the beginning of our time and remain to be so, and since we all know that most children up to now are reluctant to open the pages of those authoritative sources, now I know why most of our Johnnys don’t read, don’t write, don’t study much: The encyclopedias tell them knowledge is a boring subject, not much fun. Knowledge is only good for bringing around town, for display only: If you have it, flaunt it!

Didn’t Pogo say? ‘I have seen the enemy, and it is US.’ The encyclopedias have, after all these years, turned out to be the hidden enemy of knowledge, not to mention understanding, contrary to everyone’s expectation, including the encyclopedia makers themselves. Those who are the bringers of knowledge have much to know themselves.

‘Help Wikimedia free the Knowledge of the world’ (wikimedia.org). I don’t mind free, but not colorless, lifeless free knowledge, if you don’t mind.