Wikipedia is one of the most dangerous things in the history of things. Though like the Guide in the sense that it contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over older, more pedestrian forms of knowledge in two important respects. First, it is free. Secondly, it is always available to give you as much knowledge as you could possibly want on nearly any topic you could possibly think of. It's a drug. It is, in fact, the greatest drug available to an information junkie like myself.

You see, I'm a geek. My geekdom is not tied to specific fields like the always popular computers, or science fiction, or my more recent fascination with rapid transit systems. Instead, I'm just plain old interested in systems of things. Given the right impetus, I'll suddenly become horribly interested in a particular thing, and want to know just how it works. Where does it come from? Why? How? And what can I do with it?

This is The Geek. That little animalistic feeder that sits at the back of the heads of intelligencia worldwide, demanding ever-increasing piles of knowledge and understanding. While some people's Geeks have a favorite food like, say, theoretical physics, marine biology, or dungeons and dragons, mine demands a constantly shifting menu. My Geek, which I envision as looking something like a viper fish, sits there in the back of my head demanding new forms of information, fresh meat to devour.

A few years back I was introduced to anime by some friends of mine. I was hooked. I spent all together too much time learning everything I could about the origins of anime, the culture that spawned it and that it spawned. I spent great big gobs of money on a rapidly swelling DVD collection. Then, all of a sudden, it was over. My Geek searched for new food, and all of that anime stuff was tossed aside like last year's toys. Which is just what it was.

The internet is the great enabler of this information addiction. With a large enough list of news sites, I can move from one to the other, all day long, starting over again to look for updates by the time I reach the end. I pick up nuggets of news and information from all around the world. Everything is skimmed, and little is retained, but the act of learning (however temporal) is the fix I need. Yet, like any addiction, this everyday fix turns into a background buzz, the hum of the ordinary. I need more.

To give you a hint of the degree of this need for information fixes, I stopped multiple times while writing this post to read CNN, Slashdot, NY1, and Gizmodo.

This is where Wikipedia comes in. The direct-to-vein information fix in a sea of snippets. All it takes is a bit of piqued curiosity of one form or another that leads me into Wikipedia to search for something. From that article I'm led to another. From there on, I'm off, surfing an unending wave of compiled human knowledge. I'm the fat man at the buffet, stealing mac and cheese from the small children.

Thanks to Wikipedia and an interest in the names of British warships, I've recently learned all about the Battle of Jutland and the structure of the British Admiralty. This evening, I've been bouncing around from the Entente Cordiale, the Confederation Bridge, the Great Belt Bridge, to the definition of a Crown Corporation and The Great Game.

And once again, while writing this very post, I was sucked out of Wikipedia to learn about the Alameda Rail Corridor Project (miraculously graffiti-free), and check out photos of the opening and a detailed project description.

This is better than food to The Geek. It's more like porn.

It doesn't stop, you must understand. The Geek just keeps devouring. It wants to know more. It wants to know why I can't find any site that will tell me why the Koror-Babeldaob Bridge collapsed (unlike the Tay Bridge, everyone knows why that collapsed). It wants to know about the World Columbian Exposition, Beaux-Arts, and the City Beautiful Movement. It feeds on the digital corpses of interesting dead people.

In the internet age, a vast field of information can turn one from open-minded to ADD in a flash. Happened to me. Gotta feed the Geek.

What, is it midnight already?