He has a blog, and in today's post (October 24, 2006) on that blog, he writes: "I asked my doctor – a specialist for this condition – how many people have ever gotten better. Answer: zero." Bummer!
But there's good news. Scott goes on to write in the same post that "The day before yesterday, while helping on a homework assignment, I noticed I could speak perfectly in rhyme... I still don’t know if this is permanent. But I do know that for one day I got to speak normally."
Congrats to Scott.
However, this post isn't really about Scott and Spasmodic Dysphonia. It's about the propagation of information on the Internet. Only "the day before yesterday" (October 22, 2006) he discovered a possible path to a cure, the first person ever to do so (and reveal it publicly). Within two days, on October 24, Wikipedia has this information incorporated in its entry on Spasmodic Dysphonia within a few hours of when Scott first published the information on his blog:
There is currently no cure for spasmodic dysphonia. [...]It's amazing to me that an encyclopedia can objectively incorporate information that's just hours old. I've heard a lot of complaints of the objectivity of articles in Wikipedia, but I've found that as long as you discount articles addressing contentious issues (such as Evolution, Religion, etc.), it's stunningly accurate and stunningly up-to-date.
Scott Adams, the creator of the famous cartoon Dilbert, has had Spasmodic dysphonia up till mid-October, 2006. He developed a method to work around the disorder and has been able to speak normally since. Full story on his weblog [1], no scientific proof yet.
This sort of example has convinced me that some time in the next twenty to fifty years, the Mainstream Media (MSM), especially of the print variety, will cease to exist (or exist just as a novelty). I don't usually make this opinion of mine public because most people just laugh, but the speed of the Internet and the humans monitoring it are something that I don't think the MSM can compete with.
An encyclopedia with information that is never more than a few hours old. Amazing!
2 comments:
By sheer coincidence, I read this about Wikipedia.
Remember it the next time someone gets all sniffy (Orrin Judd comes to mind) about citing Wikipedia as a source.
Hey Skipper,
That's a great article and I can feel future posts brewing in my brain. My favorite sentence: "They argue that an army of hobbyists, teenagers, and even the occasional troll can create a more comprehensive, more useful, and possibly even more accurate resource than can be found in the ivied halls."
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