Wikiality
August 1, 2006
Roscoe, NY
Back in the day (way before my time, of course), people would often turn off their TVs and lights for the night following Johnny Carson's monologue. These days, this household is probably not alone in retiring after "The Wørd" segment on The Colbert Report, and sometimes it's not so easily falling asleep.
Last night, Stephen delivered a truly frightening vision of the future of consensus reality. Basically, reality is what Wikipedia says it is, and thus is easily editable by anyone. "Wikiality" already has a section in Wikipedia's entry on The Colbert Report:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Colbert_Report#Wikiality
I'm sure the actual video segment will soon appear in the Comedy Central archives:
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http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_colbert_report/videos/the_word/index.jhtml
but it's not there as I write this.
It's easily to imagine a scenario in which particular Wikipedia entries are targetted by political organizations to change history. Tomorrow's wars may well be fought on the Wikipedia battleground.
Wikiality: It's scarier than truthiness.