Wiki

The wiki format provides a wide range of benefits for a project like this.

Self-Creating, Evolving and Eternal

The first advantage of the wiki format is the ability to collaborate. Since metaculture is an emergent system of thought, there are many people with their own knowledge and perspective about each subject. The wiki format allows them all to contribute if they have something to add.

People also get things wrong, and scientific advancement enhances and replaces old ideas as our knowledge about them expands. Wiki will allow anyone to point out and correct factual errors, or update pages on any subject that has become obsolete. A static writing would forever enshrine those obsolete ideas until it reads like a 50 year old science textbook.

The wiki format will allow those additions and revisions to continue in perpetuity. If the goal of metaculture is to create a system of thought that can supplant the ones that have stood for the last 2000 years, it needs to allow for all the changes that will come in the next 2000 years. This cannot be accomplished with a static writing format. We can barely imagine what the next 100 years of scientific advancement will bring, much less the next 1000.

Non-Linear Reading Format

The non-linear reading format wiki provides has two key advantages. Human thought itself is non-linear, constantly veering off on tangents as the conceptual associations we make focus our attention on new ideas. Each person comes to it with their own knowledge and ignorance on each subject. If an article mentions Maslow's hierarchy of needs for instance, you may already know all about this subject or you may have never heard of it. The wiki format allows you to follow that link and learn more about it if necessary, or continue reading if you are already familiar with the subject.

This allows each article to be written much more concisely than it could be in a linear format. In a book it is necessary to dedicate time, energy and space to any concept that the reader is likely to be unfamiliar with. Any avid reader of popular science and philosophy is familiar with the tedium of having the same common concepts explained again and again in every book they read because of the possibility that another reader may be learning about the subject for the first time. The wiki format replaces these redundant explanations with a single link that the reader can follow if needed.

Maintaining Cultural Relevance

While the initial wiki was populated with the writings of a single author, the ideas should be fully separated from their authorship. First person perspectives and personal anecdotes are not used, and references to specific current events and popular culture can be updated to stay current. If a subjective point cannot be made without the first person, the term "this author" will be used in place of "I" to emphasize the anonymous and collaborative goal of this project.

References to religions, scripture, politics and culture should be generalized and made as universal as possible to allow people from any time, place or background to approach the subject matter equally.

Eventually, the wiki platform will also allow for translations into multiple languages and recontextualization of the ideas for individual cultures.

Languages and Education Levels

The wiki will also allow for multiple language translations, as well as multiple education level translations. The initial wiki will be written on an academic reading level and assume the reader is familiar with of the fundamentals of science, philosophy, theology, and fractals. But each page should eventually offer simplified versions that explain concepts using allegory and examples, and provide additional reference materials to help those who are unfamiliar with with the topics being discussed.

Video based tutorials are also provided that provide different levels of simplicity and depth in their explanations. The best publicly available video content on each subject is embedded on each page to help provide rich and entertaining background information.

References

The wiki will allow extensive linking to source material and research that backs up any assertions or conclusions made. The initial framework will mostly describe the perspective and methodology that metaculture will use to identify religious, psychological, political, and economic best-practices rather than drawing conclusions on what they currently are. This task is better left to subject matter experts who can provide this detail and cite the research to back it up. Hence, extensive links to corresponding pages on Wikipedia.org will be used to provide background information since these are written and maintained by experts already, and metaculture simply provides organization and perspective on these facts, not primary research or summarization thereof.

Music and Video

Embedded educational videos related to each subject will be provided where available. These may not always approach the subject matter from the exact perspective being presented in the text, but if not they are complementary or provide good background information. Some are taken from podcasts or YouTube channels that have a lot of other content, and it should go without saying that linking to one specific video is not an endorsement of all content on that channel.

All pages will also contain a music video for a song that evokes that subject. These can be used as a playlist to provide musical accompaniment as you read.

Version Control

Finally, the wiki will track the version history of each article and provide the ability for authors to discuss changes, and for those discussions to be visible to future generations. It's like scripture with version control. giture if you will.