“For some time now we have had things that begin with the prefix “tele-,” which literally means “far” but which really means “to bring nearer.” Thus, with the telescope we can bring things like the moon and the planets so near that they no longer look as if they are in cosmic space.”
—William Flusser, Three Spaces
The Wiki race is a challenge where you are given two random Wikipedia pages and, in the smallest amount of link clicks, you must reach one page from another. Sometimes the goal is to reach the page for Jesus or death or something– it’s colloquial.
Another wiki pathway is following the first non-italicized, non-parenthesized link of any Wikipedia page and repeating that process eventually leads either to the article for Philosophy or an inescapable link loop. In February 2016, this was true for 97% of all articles on Wikipedia, according to Wikipedia.
In both of these challenges, there is a sense that the link is a physical distance between origin and destination. You are jumping from one stepping stone to the next on a strategic path, knowing where you will eventually end up. By bringing the destination closer to you through every click, you’re teleporting over space in an instant. The word Wiki, after all, originated from the Hawaiian language; It means quick (wiki wiki), implying a traversal of distance. In this case, it’s distance in space without the constraint of time.
In the creation of Wikipedia, the first mods knighted themselves the heirs of Ptolemy in his gathering of scrolls for the library of Alexandria. However, instead of copying or stealing original texts, they summarize them separately from the individuals who previously thought it was theirs (Gleick). Through editing and annotation, these summaries become more elaborate over time, similar to the commentary in the Talmud. They are a constant work in progress.