I recently watched Arthur C. Clarke’s, “Fractals, The Colors of Infinity”. The science film describes the Mandelbrot set. If you are not familiar with the Mandelbrot set, it is an equation discovered by a team led by Benoît Mandelbrot. The equation creates a fractal when it is plotted out on a two dimensional graph. The interesting part of the fractal is that you can zoom in on any part of the Mandelbrot set and you will see it repeat itself in interesting ways. The more you zoom in, the more you can see the patterns reemerging, until you can see the image of the top level of the Mandelbrot set being repeated over and over again.
So what does that mean for wikis? Well, they work much like the Mandelbrot set. You can create as much information you want a certain level, such as you would see with Wikipedia. If you zoom in on the information, it just leads to more information and the concept itself can’t actually be fully described without understanding the detail. However, the detail is just as complex as the top level. Because Wikipedia is evolving and purportedly covers all knowledge known to mankind, it is like the top level of the Mandelbrot set, which would essentially be the all-encompassing gathering of all of the knowledge available to humans. For example, let’s say you start at “automobile” which would represent a significant portion of human thought and knowledge. But once you understood what automobile was, you would have to go to motor to get more information. This is akin to zooming in one level of the Mandelbrot set. From engine, perhaps you would zoom into steam engines. But the lower you go in knowledge the more knowledge there is that needs to be covered.
If by some magic, you reach a dead end in Wikipedia, it just means that the next lower set of knowledge hasn’t yet been zoomed into.
To a degree this is what sub-wikis accomplish. They are like a further zooming in of the Mandelbrot set. So if you “bottomed out” Wikipedia by reaching a low level of information (a higher zoom rate of the Mandelbrot set) you could go to the next zoom level down by using a sub-wiki. For example, if Wikipedia doesn’t provide the level of required knowledge for knitting, you could hit either WikiKnitting.com or Knitting-and.com’s Wiki. These would essentially be the next level of zoom.
But even these would eventually “bottom out”. Then you would need to go to the next level of zoom.
Like the Mandelbrot, where the part of the set that is actually described and rendered by the computer is the part that the eye is focusing on, on the screen, the wiki is rendered and created when the human mind focuses on that piece of detail, that lacking bit of knowledge.
What does this mean for wikis?
Let me introduce what I term the “Principle of the Infinite Wiki” or “Wiki Infinity”. This principle is that any wiki can be infinitely large. Any sub-wiki can be infinitely large. Wikipedia may be the largest wiki, but the knowledge of the knitting wiki can be just as infinite and encompassing as that of Wikipedia. What matters is what the mind’s eye is focusing on. That will be what becomes defined and rendered as wiki-content. As a wiki or sub-wiki bottoms out, it is just a matter of refocusing the zoom and that level of knowledge can become clear.
Because wikis are collaborative media, this amount of knowledge is essentially as infinite as the human mind. And even if the entire planet has a finite amount of knowledge of knitting, the next generation to rise up will have more knowledge that wasn’t held before. It will become defined.
Because wikis are infinite, and sub-wikis provide the next level of zoom, and are also infinite, what is crucial is ensuring the continuity of wikis over the years. Because while the knowledge is infinite, those who administer wikis are not immortal. The zoom level will be lost and have to be recreated if a wiki is discontinued.
Hopefully this will give you something to think about. Until next time!
