This presentation is an alternative to the disconnected information sources that we use in our daily lives to keep up with current affairs and form our opinions.
- Mass media are good at illuminating selected
current events. They don't provide much in the way of context and
follow up and they almost always contain a bias. This site follows
events until they are resolved. Whether it contains a bias you will
have to judge.
- Books, magazines and presentations impose a linear
structure and force you to follow the author's flow. The structure of
this site lets you pick and choose the topics that are of interest to
you.
- Blogs can be hard to follow and become polluted
with off topic content. This site imposes organization and allows comments but imposes
editorial review before comments become available publicly. Modern blogs with advanced search capabilities and topic tags have begun to address the lack of organization.
- Wikis are new and still unfamiliar to most folks
but they are the best way to accumulate information. Like blogs they
can become polluted and they don't offer inherent organization.
Wiki's greatest strength lies in the ability to encourage community contributions and editing. Size of contributing community is essential the success of a wiki. Ultimately this site will become more wiki like in its ability to
accumulate information but will retain its organization.
So this site is something new. Like a wiki it can accept input from a variety of sources. Like the mass media and many blogs it follows events as they occur. Like a book it is organized to tell a story. But unlike all of these it allows you to jump around as much as you like to follow the story you find interesting. Although it contains significant detail, it contains external links you can follow for more.