Wikipedia's Contorted Entries

The Herald Tribune reports that "Last year, someone edited the Wikipedia entry for the Sea World theme parks to change all mentions of orcas to killer whales, insisting that this was a more accurate name for the species... There was another, unexplained edit: A paragraph about criticism of Sea World's "lack of respect toward its orcas" disappeared. Both changes, it turns out, originated at a computer at Anheuser-Busch, Sea World's owner."

"Dozens of similar examples of insider editing came to light last week through WikiScanner, a new Web site that traces the source of millions of changes to Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. The site, wikiscanner.virgil.gr, created by a computer science graduate student, Virgil Griffith, cross-references an edited entry on Wikipedia with the owner of the computer network where the change originated, using the Internet protocol address of the editor's network."

...So, read what you will on Wikipedia with a huge grain of salt.

Internet Protocol Overload!

BusinessWeek reports that the Internet is running out of addresses. There are 4 billion possible
combinations that make up a 10-digit IP (Internet Protocol) address, which identifies the location of computers, routers, and other network devices. Some 3 billion IP addresses are taken, and the remainder will likely be gone by 2010.

Overload in Packaging

A New York Times story, titled "Product Packages Now Shout to Get Your Attention" written by Louise Story, is most revealing about the direction of information overload in society:

"In the last 100 years, Pepsi had changed the look of its can, and before that its bottles, only 10 times. This year alone, the soft-drink maker will switch designs every few weeks. Kleenex boxes used to be square or rectangular, but no more. Kleenex, after 40 years of sticking with square and rectangular boxes, has started selling tissues in oval packages."

"Coors Light bottles now have labels that turn blue when the beer is chilled to the right temperature. And Huggies' Henry the Hippo hand soap bottles have a light that flashes for 20 seconds to show children how long they should wash their hands."

"Consumer goods companies, which once saw packages largely as containers for shipping their products, are now using them more as 3-D ads to grab shoppers' attention. The shift is mostly because of the rise of the Internet and hundreds of television channels, which mean marketers can no longer count on people seeing their commercials. ...So they are using their bottles, cans, boxes and plastic packs to improve sales by attracting the eyes of consumers, who often make most of their shopping decisions at the last minute while standing in front of store shelves. "

Does this mean ever-accelerating product packaging changes and accompanying bombardment? It appears so.