Addiction to knowledge

I really am a serious addict to Wikipedia. For 40 years I could rely on the Grand Larousse encyclopédique only which provided me with innumerable information until I entered the Internet world back in 2003 and then I discovered Wikipedia.

It was high time I could get another source of information since the encyclopaedia of my youth was increasingly becoming obsolete. Nevertheless I certainly wouldn't be who I am without these 10 (+2) books which definitively shaped and nurtured my thirst for knowledge.

Too bad we couldn't benefit from the magic of the Internet and Wikipedia in the 60s since we would be much, much more educated than we are, no doubt about it.

Don't know about you but I, for one, know that my understanding of the world, my interaction with it and eventually my intellectual compass would be a thousand times larger than what they actually are had I the opportunity to benefit this encyclopaedia on line as a teenager (sigh...)

Youngsters don't know how lucky they are. And to think a huge majority of them ignore that extraordinary education tool and waste their precious time playing video games or vainly chatting on FB...

If a new Nobel Prize were to be created, it should be one dedicated to Education and Jimmy Wales should be granted this prize the first year and Wikipedia every year till something even more wonderful would be conceived.

Like everyone else I know the shortcomings and errors one is too prone to fall victim of while browsing through Wiki. But cross-matching with other languages whatever they are, is a good remedy to said shortcomings and pitfalls.

Just an example: You may know about this but I had never heard anything about it before. There isn't even an article in French although France sent some 1.200 men over there. There are numerous links in the English article with one bite leading to another until you simply no longer can absorb one tinier bit of any data.

I couldn't benefit these marvels when I was young but I must consider myself happy that I still have the privilege to be alive and satisfy my boundless thirst of knowledge.

And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more.

Epicurus

(Letter to Menoeceus)