Wikipedia

I think I have a Wikipedia addiction.

Ever since I was a kid I loved picking up encyclopedias and just browsing, but Wikipedia has allowed me to take this to a whole new level. I’ve always been a curious person, and I’ve always sort of had lots of interests without seeming able or willing to go deep into them. Idle browsing of Wikipedia kind of suits me perfectly.

I wonder to what extent this has been counter-productive; it’s so much easier to read the article in Wikipedia on some subject instead of going deeper (and, say, studying the subject with some degree of seriousness). Ideally reading the Wikipedia article would be the first step towards more reading on the subject, and I guess sometimes it is. But it seems like perhaps I’ve missed out on learning more about some subjects just because reading the Wikipedia article gives me such a “kick”.

In any case, I enjoy knowing random bits of information about many subjects, so it’s not all bad. I may just try to keep written down notes on topics that I find interesting so I can go deeper into topics that I go back to more often.