Is Wikipedia a Testament to Human Curiosity or Laziness? | Big Think

Is Wikipedia a Testament to Human Curiosity or Laziness?

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Jump Associates CEO Dev Patnaik claims the web-based collaborative encyclopedia is the ultimate argument solver.

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Dev Patnaik:

Dev Patnaik is founder and chief executive of Jump Associates, a growth strategy firm. He is also the co-author of "Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy" (written with Peter Mortensen). Patnaik is a designer and strategic planner with experience in engineering, art design and business theory. He has worked with Fortune 500 firms and fledgling startups in the U.S., Asia, Europe and Australia. An assistant faculty member at Stanford University, Patnaik teaches design research methods to undergraduate and graduate students. He also speaks frequently at leading industry forums on product development, marketing and innovation.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Topic: What is your favorite website?

Dev Patnaik: Wikipedia is great because, number one, it’s the argument solver. How often have you been at a party and say, “Oh no! It’s true. You know, life cereal, if you pop rocks on it and eat it, your stomach will explode”? I said, “Well, let’s go and actually look that up, and what the story is about, or what is the history of wine, or why is a city named as it is? I find that I am often posing those random questions to myself. Or I will be walking down the street and I’ll say, “Why is the street called what it’s called?” And I can look it up in Wikipedia and I can find out and someone has actually written about it.

It is a testament to the broad and very human interest that’s out there because the fact that there’s articles on everything means that there is, somewhere out there in the world, at least one person who is as interested in that topic, as I am, even more so that they would write that article. And I think that’s fascinating. It’s a testament to the roving curiosity of the human species.