Wiki Preparation

This morning I began to sift through the massive amount of information that spawns from the front page of Wyrd2theWiki, often seeping into other wiki projects. A familiar sense of anxiety began to creep through me. I was overwhelmed. Every time I reenter the wide world of wiki, I am overwhelmed: with information, thoughts ideas, conversations, images, videos, links, links, links...there is so much out there, my god, where will I find the time, how will I ever find my way into this mess, and how can I possibly find my way out again?

Calm yourself. Breathe.

I took a deep breath and tried to relax. I saw myself on the edge of the mass of water, lapping and flowing before me. I took off my shoes and sat down, putting my feet in the water. I became satisfied with skimming the pages, looking for words that interested me, looking for connections. I placed some links, I inserted an image to complement a passage that Trey has recently added, I found a relevant quote and began linking from the contents. My summer wiki has now been entangled in the mass. Before I knew it I was up to my knees in wiki. I am not yet fully immersed in the Great Waters of the Wiki, but I will continue to dip my feet in on a regular basis, test the waters, patiently waiting for this coming semester when I will arrive at the shore, naked, save for a pair of goggles, and dive in head first.  

WIKI AND PSYCHEDELICS

I notice that becoming immersed in the wiki world is not unlike a psychedelic experience. I write above about the overwhelming amount of information that the wiki opens, and I get this same feeling as a psychedelic drug begins to take effect on my consciousness. "Links" start to form in my mind to new areas of thought and information that had previously remained static and disconnected from my normal thought patterns. I am suddenly able to make connections where, previously, I wasn't able. I didn't have the means for connection. If I think of my "sober mind" as a static piece of text, than my mind under the influence of psychedelics becomes a wiki.

In the Forward to "The Joyous Cosmology", Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert discuss the tendency for an expanding culture to eventually "turn on itself, recognize the foolish inadequacy of the flimsy systems it imposes on the world, suspend its own rigid control, and overthrow the domination of cognitive experience."

But how do we do this? Once we accept that the final frontier lies, not only in outer space, but in inner space, how do we begin exploring the inner space? How do we propel ourselves down the proverbial "rabbit hole"?

Leary asks, "what are the stimuli necessary and sufficient to overthrow the domination of the conceptual and to open up the "potential forms of consciousness"? He goes on to explain that the most "direct techniques" lie in chemicals such as mescaline, LSD, and psilocybin. The psychedelic experience is a path to "overthrow the domination of the cognitive experience". So, then, is the wiki (or the wikidelic experience). The wiki is the "wi-key" to the doors of perception. 

I think of the "rabbit hole" as the never-ending flow of information. In a normal state of mind, we can only stare in wonder and amazement. If we try to enter the hole and make sense of what's going on, we will simply get lost or go insane. We have no means to organize the data, so it continues to flow around us in chaos. Under the influence of the wiki, we are able to make connections through links and attempt to sort out this mess of information. The wiki becomes our anchor to "reality" as we drift deeper and deeper into ourselves and our collective consciousness. The wiki, in a sense, prevents us from getting lost or going insane as we explore.