From the Laptop of Jeremy Irish

I don't support SOPA, or PIPA or dogs sleeping on sofas. But it turns out Wikipedia decided to black out the english version of their web site because they really, really don't support them.

As a result, I didn't have access Wikipedia for a full 24 hours, and that turned out to be a good thing.

What I realized is that I was using Wikipedia as a crutch instead of doing my own research, which is pretty much what I used to do in school with Encyclopedia Britannica (or at least the volumes we owned from picking them up at the grocery store every so often. I did a lot of reports on subjects that started with P, for example, not owning every volume).

So, like when the power went out of my house, I had to get out of my comfort zone and do things a little different. I found new web sites to get the answers I needed (and the communities around those subjects), and actually found differing opinions on the subject that weren't relegated to a discuss page. In other cases I came to my own conclusions doing my own research, instead of relying on the expert on Wikipedia - who frankly ends up to be the one with the most time on their hands to edit the topic.

So thanks Wikipedia for going dark. It helped to decentralize information and made me smarter. I'm not sure if I plan to go back to you as often as I used to.