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 | This page in a nutshell: What's So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way? |
Once upon a time, there was a man with a vision. A vision that there could be a place that anyone could contribute to, pooling the collective intelligence of Earth to create a databank, an encyclopedia that anyone could edit. And this encyclopedia would contain, he declared, in words that echoed down through the ages, "The Sum Total Of Human Knowledge".
And lo, the encyclopedia was founded. And the people rejoiced; now, anyone could learn, about anything, and it did not cost them a penny. (Beyond normal Internet connection fees.) They didn't have to wait years and pay still more money to have the subjects the encyclopedia covered updated. It would be done almost instantly. In fact, they could do it themselves!
But somebody had to ensure that the creatures of darkness were kept at bay. After all, your brother's garage band that had his brosef burn a CD of them screaming into a 50-cent microphone was not part of The Sum Total Of Human Knowledge. This was reasonable. This was understandable. This was Good.
But as time passed, it began to be seen that - as with all books of Da Rulz, once a Book of Rules was established, it became self-sustaining. Self-replicating. It hungered, and it grew. New rules were established. Old rules were tightened. And so it was that more and more things were deemed Unworthy of being part of The Sum Total Of Human Knowledge, banished to the realm beyond the Outer Gates by the use of the two Words of Power that carried the weight of the Book of Rules behind them:
And so it was what was once a free dispensary of knowledge on all subjects became steadily more limited, steadily more hemmed-in by definitions of what was Notable, and what was Not, and the nabobs and potentates who maintained the Book of Rules steadily worked to sure that the line became ever more tight and the area encompassed by Notable ever-smaller, declaring that this was Good, and that if the line became looser, if more things were allowed to become Notable - things that Once Had Been, but now were Cast Out, were given the chance to return to the fold - then there would be chaos, with fire and brimstone coming down from the skies, rivers and seas boiling, forty years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. Indeed, the only hope was to tighten things further, and cast more things out, in the name of the Encyclopedia and its Holy Founder.
Thusly, it came to pass that it was capable to be stated, among the nabobs and potentates, and the courtiers who skittered around them, that it was their concern, that it was a danger, that The Sum Total Of Human Knowledge was, in fact, at risk of being Too Inclusive.