Life online: wikis

I just searched for the word ‘life’ via the Internet search engine Google on my computer and came up with 3 billion, 770 million links. That means a lot of people are talking about life, taking photos of life, writing about life, hearing about life, and in reality-living their lives on the Internet. Life…What is it? It’s probably one of the few things that we all have in common, and it’s definitely the most incredible aspect that defines our world, our planet in the Universe. The question remains, ‘Do you enjoy life?’ It may be an exciting situation to be part of, but it can also be quite hard to deal with at times. Life can be viewed from many different perspectives: spiritual, scientific, mathematical…After going down the Google page list I clicked onto the link http://tolweb.org/tree/. This is an interesting website indeed.

The ‘Tree of Life web project’ is an example of what a website can do for humanity. If you don’t know what a wiki site is, I will have to inform you now as this website construct is growing like wildfire. A wiki is a site on the Internet that any informed person can contribute and add information to. In this case, the ‘Tree of Life’ is a scientific attempt to map out and define as many of the living species on our planet as possible. If you are a scientist working on a specific type of Costa Rican Poison Dart Frog, this is a great place to put your wealth of knowledge for others to share and learn from. If you are a student who wants to read up on and see photographs about baboons, this is the place to go. What is inspiring to me when viewing this website is the knowledge that we as human beings can start to build wiki-based collective sites for any and every subject that interests people across the broad spectrum of life.

Why not have a wiki for skateboarding, jazz music, fishing, medicine, or English football? Are you an expert in a certain area of life? Maybe you’ve been working in aviation for several decades. Why not start a wiki site, put down everything you know about flying, and then tell all of your colleagues around the world to inject their knowledge, wisdom, perspective, and experience? What you end up with is an in-depth place to go for both novices and experts to experience a certain field of life in all its human-known glory. Can you imagine how many cool pictures of planes alone would fill an aviation wiki website? These sites can have many angles in which to experience a given subject. On the ‘Tree of Life’ site there is an internal link called ‘Treehouses’ that takes you to an area more suited to young people. Check out this ‘Treehouse’ called Man’s Best friend, a link about dogs: http://tolweb.org/treehouses/?treehouse_id=3804. At one level this site is accessible and informative to the most experienced scientific minds, but on another page like this one, fun and interesting information is shared with students, children, and the ‘young at heart’. There are some pretty cute photos of dogs here, and some really interesting facts and information. In just the Treehouse section of the website there are sub-categories like: investigations, stories, fun and games, art and culture, teacher resources, webquests, biographies, and portfolios. Each area has internal and external links to relevant content on the Internet.

Do you see what I’m getting at here people? What starts out as a simple (yet extensive and professional) scientific glossary of life on Earth has become a place where a child can read a young student’s story about an eagle: http://tolweb.org/treehouses/?treehouse_id=3624 subtly informing others about the effects of humanity upon our environment and the resulting reactions felt by animal life. Or, one can play video games like ‘Frorio the Fire Frog’: http://tolweb.org/treehouses/?treehouse_id=3421. Wiki sites like this one are changing the way knowledge is shared in our society. Any anonymous soul can become a teacher, and people of all ages and levels of education can relate to any subject imaginable. People are interested in life. Of course they are. It’s the most important thing to every single one of us. It is our essence, our gift, our opportunity, our means to fulfilling goals and dreams, and our responsibility to evolve and keep the cycle flowing for generations to come. We talk and write about everything that interests us, and now we do it on the Internet. We share knowledge and wisdom online. With the Wiki website paradigm we are extending our level of interactivity and amount of relationships with our fellow human family. Picture this. You are an architect. You start an architectural wiki site by putting up everything you know about your area of expertise. You stick up photos, audio (famous architectural speeches you recorded in the past), video (programs from TV etc.), and links to all of the sites on the Internet that you feel are necessary in giving a broad view of the subject. After telling all of your colleagues about it they start to put in what they know from their specialised areas. You have a friend who specialises in Neo-Colonial style, another into Eco-friendly housing, and still another who builds traditional mud-brick dwellings. Soon, their friends and acquaintances have added information too. Now it’s becoming a popular site on the Internet. People across the whole world, across cultures and nationalities, add to the site with what they know. Some want to make the site accessible to a variety of ages so they inject some fun games and simplified pages for younger students and children. Eventually everything that is ever discussed about the world of architecture is done on the busy forum pages of the site. Work connections and friends are made because of similar interests. Soon you’re visiting people in foreign countries giving lectures…Do you want to help start the revolution of sharing life online? What are you most passionate about? Is there a wiki website on the subject? If so, add your knowledge and creativity to it. If not, start one yourself. If you’re excited by the subject you couldn’t be the only one, could you? Let’s put life online. Then there will always be a place for humanity to teach, learn, and be inspired to live the best life possible.