With Wikipedia (and more recently sites like Wolframalpha), those of us who use the internet have more readily available access to a huge store of knowledge that tries to be as independent of particular subjects as possible. That is, the content of Wikipedia is supposed to be objectively verifiable-not the stuff of opinions, feelings and whatnot.
Of course, all knowledge is from the standpoint of an observer. That the peony is the state flower of Indian is knowledge to someone-as all knowledge is. It cannot exist outside of a someone who knows it.
That being said, there is some knowledge that is more "objective" and some that is more "subjective". These two terms work very well in a functional sense. For example, that Cazenovia, New York is a beautiful town without compare, and that it is a town with less than 7000 people both constitute knowledge from the standpoint of an observer. However, I would have to admit that only the latter is objective. The second bit of knowledge is something that we can derive from the use of specially formed cultural tools (the concept of number). These tools work in such a way that they yield knowledge that is the same from observer to observer-provided that they have the cultural tools.
Wikipedia and other "knowledge sites" make use of this kind of knowledge exclusively. It could be argued that the dominance of this kind of knowledge will lead to the downfall of the other "softer", more subjective kinds. I feel that in fact the reverse will happen-hopefully. The dominance of objective knowledge will lead to a more widespread realization of the nature of subjective knowledge (which is actually more like feelings than "knowledge"). In other words, the rise of objective knowledge will serve to conceptualize subjective knowledge as its foil. I really hope this is what happens anyway.
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