<img alt="" height="1" width="1" />[b]Wikipedia's just getting started, founder says[/b]
Waterloo Record
NEW YORK - For a very long while, knowledge was privileged and so were books, and only privileged people had access to either. Then came printing presses ...

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What annoys me about these puff pieces on wikipedia is the overused description that "knowledge was privileged and so were books, and only privileged people had access to either," as per the above article.

That may have been so in the pre-industrial Middle Ages but when I went to school in the 1970s - there was a thing called the library, which had *free* access to such books and other media. I don't recall bookstores asking for your identity and turning away people either. The media and Wikipedia would have us believe that before 2000 no-one had access to books and those that did only lived in castles or palaces, and life was bleak. What utter nonsense. If wikipedia closed down tomorrow, it may affect those with obsessive compulsive disorders, paedophiles and teen gamers, but certainly not the majority of the population.