The best things in life are free

I really can't get enough of the information age. Finding out stuff is so ridiculously simple these days. In my time, we would have to ask around, or trek to the library, find the relevant book and then hunt for whatever it is we sought, with no guarantee at all that it would be found.

But now, no sweat, we just "Google" it. Whether it's news or pop trivia or some obscure Byzantine couplet, or even information on some rare disease, it's all just a few taps on the keyboard or mobile away. Of course we can no longer smugly smile when we are the only person able to recall the date of an important event or an exact quote, but one can't have everything.

And when we Google, chances are, among the first three search results will be a link from Wikipedia. There is hardly an Internet user around the world, I'll wager, who has not benefited from the bounty of this online encyclopedia. Just think how fantastical the whole idea might have seemed in the beginning. That world of detailed information on anything under the sun, and beyond it. The website is said to receive more than 15 billion page views a month, with 7,000 new articles posted every day by its 80,000-strong army of unpaid volunteers. For Wiki, knowledge IS free.