Wikipedia's aims can be nothing but nefarious, and seem to reflect the arrogance of most Wikipedia fanatics. Their mission seems compatible with that of what I like to call "vulture capitalists". These are people who believe that the interests of corporations and their control of the (human and natural) resources of the world should never be impeded, no matter what the consequences and effects on the planet, human survival, and people's lives in the present and future.
These "vulture capitalists" do not care about people being displaced by their system; what was once public, collectively owned, and shared by people now being controlled by corporations. They have a vision that they wish to fulfill by doing anything for money or companies, and they seek to turn the world into a place where everyone competes for these things, into a dog-eat-dog place where everyone's motive is to gain everything for themselves. This love of selfish greed and utter contempt for altruism is reflected in Wikipedia's motives and their ideology.
This statement is an example of this attitude, by Jimbo Wales himself. Mr. Wales begins with a mission which sounds impeccable, but further down he praises his project and says that he is doing it for "the child in Africa" who can find a "solution to the crushing poverty that surrounds him". In other words, giving some poor child some trivial McDonald's version of knowledge, while s/he still rots in poverty. He or she can find a "solution" from the useless wiki knowledge, and while s/he remains starving, gets distracted using Wikipedia like a drug. Their people's culture can be destroyed by Wikipedia, which, like capitalism, seeks to "take back the world". It's funny, neither capitalists nor Wikipedians owned the world in the first place.
Has anyone else noticed this parallel?
--FB