According to Virginia Heffernan, who writes the column the Medium in The New York Times Magazine, Wikipedia has become an essential catalog, especially when it comes to "digital artifacts" and the Internet itself. Do you use Wikipedia? If so, what for, and why?
In her column "Prize Descriptions," Virginia Heffernan sings Wikipedia's praises:
I visit Wikipedia every day. I study the evolving entries for Internet-specific entities like World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Foursquare and Picasa, often savoring the lucid exposition that Wikipedia brings to technical subjects that might not be expected to inspire poetry and for which no vocabulary has yet been set.
Wikipedia is a perfectly serviceable guide to non-Internet life. But as a companion to the stuff that was born on the Internet, Wikipedia — itself an Internet artifact — will never be surpassed.
She continues:
Wikipedia is vitally important to the culture. Digital artifacts like video games are our answer to the album covers and romance novels, the saxophone solos and cigarette cases, that previously defined culture. Today an "object" that gives meaning might be an e-book. An MP3. A Flash animation. An HTML5 animation. A video, an e-mail, a text message, a blog. A Tumblr blog. A Foursquare badge. Around these artifacts we now form our identities.
Students: Tell us how you use Wikipedia and why. Do you use it more for school, or for personal reasons? Do you agree or disagree with Ms. Heffernan that "Wikipedia is vitally important to the culture"? Why? Why do you think people choose to contribute to it? Have you ever considered contributing to Wikipedia?
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