By Alec DavisThe Daily Northwestern

There was a time long ago, long before any of us can remember, when the knowledge of the world was contained in the great minds, universities and libraries of the world. While that knowledge still exists today, to say that it is contained within these same locations would hardly be appropriate.

That’s right: The Internet has done more than make pornography accessible to every 13-year-old boy. It has released the wonders of the world to all. And while this information is available through thousands of locations across the World Wide Web, there is one site that has made a mission of trying to gather it together.

Wikipedia. Odds are you probably know of it and use it, too. At least I hope so, because you should. It knows everything. Well, not quite everything, but it will someday, as it continues to grow day by day. Wikipedia is going to change a lot of things.

I’m talking about an impending educational revolution. Many students, including me, use Wikipedia as either a supplement to or a replacement for their normal educational materials. When I need to know what a laser diode is, or the orbital configuration of copper, I don’t open the books I paid $200 for; I turn to the world’s free online encyclopedia. I learn just as well.

Let’s face it: A lot of textbooks are horribly written. Why some of these people feel compelled to write books is beyond me. They might be physics geniuses, but their grasp of the English language is about as good as my grasp of quantum physics.

Wikipedia, however, is a collaboration, and its articles are often more concise, better worded and much easier to navigate. The links within articles are perhaps one of the best features of the site. With them you can move easily back and forth between articles and find related information quickly. If it weren’t for the fact that teachers assign problems out of the books, I probably wouldn’t even buy them anymore.

Credibility is where Wiki is questioned, and with good reason, because while individuals can be intelligent, people are dumb. But somehow Wiki manages to be surprisingly accurate, and it even held its own against Britannica in a study conducted by the journal Nature. You can’t take everything on the site as gospel. But then again, you can’t do that with textbooks or encyclopedias, either.

There are more than just academic uses. Wikipedia can be one of the greatest time-wasters, as well. While I have used Wikipedia quite often to help me with school work, the number of hours I have logged on it for these purposes is dwarfed by the number of hours I’ve spent just looking at completely random articles.

So continue to buy those expensive books if you want. I guess they do make you look really smart if you put them in your bookcase. But know that those same answers are just a click away … and then another click, and another.

McCormick senior Alec Davis can be reached at [email protected].