Rants And Ramblings About Mobile Technology
Anders Borg writing about the fun and crazy world of mobile and Internet service technologies.
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Sunday, April 05, 2009
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and mobile communication
I recently read the Hitchhiker’s books for probably the 5th or 6th time, and I also read about how the h2g2.com service came about, that Douglas Adams set up right before the IT bubble burst, and that was then acquired by BBC and still exists under that ownership.
In several ways h2g2.com was a very creative idea at the time, consisting of several nowadays household concepts like cloud computing, peer reviews, user-generated content, mobile access, etc.
Interestingly early on DNA and his team had the idea of using mobile phones to access the h2g2.com content. The mobile phone then served as a real life H2G2 terminal, using communication via the mobile network instead of the sub-etha ditto (same, same, but different).
I figure you already see that Wikipedia in many ways made real what h2g2.com set about to do, so actually I would advice BBC to collaborate with Wikipedia (through funding and other means), creating an even better Wikipedia.
I also advice you to check out h2g2.com. It’s certainly not Wikipedia in terms of scope and aim. It’s more like a number of tutorials on different things.
And if you haven’t read the H2G2 books, please do so. Otherwise you are not a geek.
h2g2 isn't wikipedia, and the world's a better place for it. Hootoo (as the locals call it) was never meant to be an encyclopaedia, it was meant to be a Guide. Wiki will tell you the names of major plastic bag manufacturers - h2g2 will tell you how to fashion that bag into a bra.
What's more, h2g2's a community, a buzzing, vibrant collective of writers and commenters compared to the sterile wikipedia.
There's room in the world for both, but by proposing the two are combined, you're doing both h2g2 and wikipedia a disservice.
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