Wikipedia

1.) I can remember that all throughout high school being told "I will fail you if you even think about using Wikipedia!" By the time college came around I was far too terrified to even think about using it as a real source. This most likely helped in my academic life, but in my personal life, I use Wikipedia often. When something needs no source or it's simply of personal interest to me, I nearly exclusively use Wikipedia. I also use WikiNews as a fun diversion in my day to hear about little known stories Fox or the BBC wouldn't carry.

2.) I believe that based off of Lessig and Schiff's articles that Wikipedia CAN conquer expertise not only based on fact or citation, but simply on user experience. Seriously scholarly sites like Lexis-Nexus or Ebsco are difficult to use and contain a large amount of unpleasantly organized data. Wikipedia is easy to use, easy to opperate, and it looks good. To the average person, that makes all the difference.

3.) Reacting to Bilton's piece, I would say that it makes sense how much information we freely give up on the internet. When someone is in the comfort of their own home and is devoid of the eye to eye human contact, they get a little loose. Look at things like Facebook or Twitter. The other day, a White House journalist suffered a heart attack and Tweeted the entire thing live. He survived thankfully, but what does that say when people are streaming live the details of a personal health drama? When people are drawn away from the world in it's physical sense, they become overly detailed with themselves to the world.