Information Is Free and Four

Four years ago today, the Wikipedia was founded. What is it? Simply the biggest, free, online, open-source reference project on the net. It has rapidly become the place to go for up-to-the-minute updates on big current stories such as the tsunami, the Cassini-Huygens Mission to Titan, and the Iraq Survey group as well as an ever-evolving reference site for most anything you can think of.

Like How To Solve A Rubik's Cube, the 17th century playwright Aphra Behn (considered to be the world's first professional female writer), and good old Hutt River Province (for which I wrote the original entry, and which I'm delighted to find has been expanded upon).

Hey, there's a Singaporean edition!

And because it's open-source, anyone can edit it. Anytime. In fact, the onus is on you, the user, to correct any typos, inaccuracies, or ambiguities you find. Right now, there are literally hundreds to thousands of users reading, writing, and editing the Wikipedia - adding to it, expanding on the world's biggest free information resource, and tidying it up. For free.

Happy Birthday, Wiki. You're the truest and best expression of the Information Age.