wiki...

A few days back I happened to see the above article in hindu-newspaper. I don’t think anyone needs an introduction to Wikipedia-the online encyclopedia. It was an article which celebrated the 10^th birthday of wiki. It said in just a 10 years’ time, wiki had grown in to the 7^th most popular website among millions and millions, with more than 18 million articles. It just reminds me of those old days during which I first came to know about it and a particular incident which makes me feel shy even today.

It was in the year 2002, we were in our college, studying (?!) engineering-3^rd year. By then wiki was very popular among my friends. And when we were about to leave our college at the end of the course, it was 2003- April. As usual ….a kind of sentiment had developed over those years; we all wanted to have something memorable; our college computer center was so famous for running 24*7, maintaining a huge repository of various softwares and other study-materials. Thousands of books were made available in LANs. And I wanted to collect all the electronic literature that was available within our reach. But all those things-computers, internet, ebooks- were very new to me. As I did not do well in college, I had a kind of understanding that I needed to gather a lot of knowledge. Moreover, I was pretty sure that I would not get a campus placement. So I thought I should read them all later and try to gain some understanding of the subjects.

              It was a time when internet availability was very limited to major cities; in my village-town, it was too costly. There was no computer with me that time. i had not even seen a computer till aug-1999. Since that was the case, I just wanted to preserve some sites which I deemed good at that time. One among them was wiki; we were very fascinated to see a free online encyclopedia.

              I asked one of my batchmates – palaniappan, to store a list of websites for me, which included wiki too. But the storage device that I gave him – ohh no…..it was soooo pathetic, I was sooooo naïve and soooo silly - I gave him a single CD. Only that much was the understanding I had about CDs, their capacities and webpage sizes. Just imagine an attempt to copy the entire wiki on one CD. And not only wiki, the list included more than 15 to 20 websites. I really did not know how much space it would take, the capacity of CD and the like. Man, that fellow palani did not feel offended, did not feel taken aback; he did not even tell that to my face that it was impossible. Being a very brilliant and bright student, he must have been very quick to understand that I did not understand the technical details and might have decided not to confuse me by telling all those jargons. Whatever was the reason, ultimately he did a job. He copied the index home page of all those listed websites. Even now, I do have that CD, with those front pages copied. I do know what were the sites, though I don’t have them all copied.

              To think of that now, it feels toooo awkward and embarrassing.  What a fool I was then….. how ignorant…and what a shame.

              Now…..

              After 10 years….. wiki had grown a lot(from 5 lakh articles in 2001 to 35 lakh articles in 2010 in English alone), adding thousands of articles everyday….soon it would touch 2crore articles in toto.

              And I think, I too had gained some knowledge about computers and my profession (steel making) in this span of 10 years. The picture below shows the screenshot of my desktop, and it would self-explain a lot.

All the parts- RAM(corsair XMS-DDR3), HARD DISK(SATA 3.0), processor(AMD PHENOM II X6 1055T, motherboard(ASUS- M4A89GTDpro-USB 3.0), cabinet, graphics card(ATI R-HD 5670), keyboard-mouse combo(logitech MK320), LAN card(ASUS-PCE N13-802.11n)…etc… - are my own choices. Now….I think I know what it would take to copy an entire website. Of course, it’s very clear when they(wiki) are running so many servers together.

With that I tend to think why I was soooo poor and ignorant of things in general. Grown-up in a small village, I did not have sufficient exposure; none to guide. We were just left to study. No tuitions. No goals. No plans. No preparations in its real sense. We just got along in school. Entering college was a shock; it was filled with people from large cities ‘n with excellent backgrounds. We were very poor guys from small villages. Ha…what a contrast it was.

              But the scenario should change; should be changed. People from rural areas do not have good educational facilities. They do not have the opportunities to develop their full potential. It is well said that “equality means giving equal opportunities to grow”. But it remains just in words. It is not so in reality. It is during our formative years that we develop our faculties, and grown, we apply and utilize them to understand various phenomena and lead life fruitfully. A chick, whose wings are clipped in birth, can’t fly well. A man with crippled legs can’t win sprints and races. A man with poor educational background can’t shine in higher studies. It takes a very strong foundation to raise skyscrapers. But…. many villages do not have good schools. Teachers are not far-sighted. Without beacon and compass, any ship-however mighty it may be- would be reduced to splinters. There are people in villages that are wise without proper education. Better education can make them still better and wiser.

Good education has become a costly commodity for villagers. And….it’s painful to see the next generation suffer the same; we are helpless to do the necessary.