Just the Facts (if there are such things)

The other day, I found myself in a conversation that eventually got hung up on one particular question...who was the lead singer of AC/DC that preceded Brian Johnson? After some long pauses in which everyone attempted to pull this elusive name from thin air, and during which a myriad of comical and incorrect guesses were made, one of us succumbed and finally looked up the answer (Ronald Belford "Bon" Scott). There was a time when we would be plagued by questions for days, even weeks, until somehow the answer came our way or we had the chance to consult the local library and hunt down a topical book using ye olde Dewey decimal system.

Nowadays, as a friend of mine and I always say, "Take it to the net!"

That is exactly how I was reminded that it was Bon Scott who was on the Highway to Hell. I don't know if this fact was grabbed off of Wikipedia, or a quick Google search was done, but it is a fairly well known fact and easy to find corroborative evidence backing it. But today I thought I would hop on Wikipedia and see what else they had to say about Bon Scott so as to further quench the sponge for knowledge in my skull; but, was I really learning or just latching on to "facts" as presented.

On that very same page, these two sentences appeared in different paragraphs:

''Back in Black is currently the second best-selling album worldwide and the biggest selling album worldwide by any band."

"Some sources rank Back in Black as the second-best-selling album in history."

Had I only read the first sentence, I would be telling just about everybody who gave two shits about AC/DC that Back in Black was the second best-selling album of all time....done...it's a fact. However, I did read on, there appeared to be some discrepencies, and upon closer inspection through Wikipedia I found that Back in Black is actually one of four albums claiming to have sold over $40 million copies worldwide. This sort of makes it potentially tied for second place. That doesn't sound quite so much like a fact anymore.

I know recently Middlebury College in VT banned citing Wikipedia as a source for term papers, so academia has certainly begun taking steps to ensure that their integrity is withheld. Still, the fact remains that the majority of the populace is getting most of their facts from sites like Wikipedia, IMDB and Google seaches that lead us to random pages. People are fueling the collective global knowledge using the world wide web, and I am just as guilty as any of them. We used to say that "History is written by the winners," but now it seems that history and even the present is written by whomever has a mind to...and I'm not even sure that is a bad thing.

What I do know is that I love this world where I can instantly get the satisfaction of an answer to my most innane questions, and that I am usually only superficially concerned about the integriy of the source material. And honestly, are things really that different, or is it just that there are so many more sources than there used to be? Newspapers and televised news programs have been shouting out headlines as fast as they can for decades, and corrections and apologies rarely make the front page (there are exceptions - sorry, Dan Rather). At least most of the larger fact dispensing websites let the public know that they are instrumental in maintaining the accuracy of that website. Again, history now being written by the collective audience that it seeks to educate.

I guess that the facts that often matter are the ones that the most people agree upon, and when push comes to shove, it is the truths they believe in that really make a diffence in the long run.
How's that for deep?

So until then I'm going to be spreading the fact that Back in Black is the second best-selling album of all time, and I might even start telling people that Appetite for Destruction is the first. Is it a fact? If enough people belive me and start spreading it around, it might just become one.

Same to same,

Hendry