I miss that table at my grandparents, for sure....it's just weird to me how many of the things I learn have come through this one organization!
That's a good point, it's a very influential site, for sure. It makes me a bit worried that it's too powerful and holds too much societal sway. But then I think about what it was like prior to wikipedia and it wasn't so different, really. Although for a deep dive in to most topics, you had to research a number of sources, people would still initially turn to either a dictionary or an encyclopedia. Encyclopedia's were the shit. I can recall sitting around my grandparents dinner table and at least three times during the meal, one of them would get up to fetch the dictionary or the encyclopedia. Now, people reach in their pockets. Not so different, only that whats in your pocket is the equivalent of hours of research in a library in minutes.
It's hard to say whether Wikipedia is more or less powerful in its 'societal sway' than traditional encyclopedias of years past. It's free and certainly more accessible, which allows it to reach a broader audience. But it's also written and edited by many contributors of various backgrounds, where encyclopedias probably underwent thorough editing (and most likely have a consistent bias). Encyclopedias and similar resources were pretty limited too, as a person could only really access an encyclopedia set they owned or could access from their local library. Now we have access to all types of information with a variety of biases and viewpoints, putting the power in the hands of the researcher as long as they're smart about how they're getting their sources.