Since the first post on the Theory of the blooming society and the positive multitude is about knowledge, and this post is not ready yet… I decided that in the meanwhile, I will instead post a strong recommendation and celebration of this newly released, fantastic homepage/project:
Wolfram|Alpha!
This, quoting their own homepage, is:
… the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. You enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and growing collection of data to compute the answer.
It was created by Stephen Wolfram, a “distinguished scientist, inventor, author and business leader”. It is free of charge and seems to be using correct sources, I hope it continues that way… It also has an amazing capacity, according their blog it will be able to handle
… 175 million queries (yielding maybe a billion) per day—over 5 billion queries (encompassing around 30 billion calculations) per month.
The spreading of knowledge to everyone is like this is an important, beautiful and fantastic gift to humanity. It can lead to many good things. The free access of knowledge lies at the very foundations of a prosperous, democratic world. Access to knowledge liberates and can make the human being better, smarter and more accepting of others.
Sokrates said
To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.
The access to a large variety of knowledge from many different sources often brings this insight after a while I think, if you have an open mind toward it of course. But then again, positive/constructive learning often opens your mind.
I also think that the more you learn, the more you realize that you
a) cannot hold all knowledge in your head, so you have to rely on others to know things
b) the knowledge that is out there is cannot assure us 100% accuracy in practically anything.
So we know nothing in the end. But still, learning and acquiring more knowledge in many cases lead to a state of humbleness towards the knowledge of others; at least on a theoretical level, when we are on our own. In face to face arguments with others we often become competitive, and in our days knowledge is key to be a winner, so one might often feel that one has to know best…
But in either case, I think in the long run, knowledge brings larger understanding and acceptance of others, which brings peace, and peace brings prosperity – a prosperous, peaceful society enables a good life and the free flow of love…
All in all; thumbs up for Wolfram|Alpha!
