The Value of Wikipedia

I think that wikipedia is extremely helpful to anyone doing research. I personally do not use it as a source, however it is a great place to go to learn a general idea about the topic and to find links to more credible sites, rather than having to wade through the results found when looking on the web with a search engine. Academically, this makes wikipedia useful, but, due to the open-content imput, someone cannot and should not use it as a source for factual information on an academic paper. The open-content does allow for very up-to-date news and such, however I think that any user should go into wikipedia knowing that the content might not always be correct or unbiased. At the end of the day though, I think it is more helpful than harmful, and allows knowledge to be access freely and without the bias that one would get if they were looking things up in a book and anything that gives people a chance to learn more or to become interested in something new sounds good to me.

Digital Autobiography

I have been using a computer for almost all of my life. My dad was a computer programmer and he built our family our first computer when I was quite young, with a simple DOS interface, colored so that my sister and I would think it was cool. We had to load up computer games by putting in the drive name and the .exe filename. Our family had a windows platform a few years later, but the old computer was still used for games and such.

Being on the computer for me now is something that is both fun and interesting. I find myself more and more being interested in learning everything about computers and the internet. I blog, on several sites, but it is mostly personal writing. I'm on myspace and facebook, and I used to be on AIM, but don't use it that much anymore. I'm on the internet alot. I use it for research for classes and sometimes just for fun. I enjoy surfing around to find interesting things to discuss with my friends, a pastime in my social group.