Wikis and blogs

I have been thinking about wikis and blogs - and other parts of Web 2.0 - lately, and thinking that perhaps the ideas are not so new after all. The illustration here is taken from the talmud, which is around 1500 years old. It is somewhere between a blog (additive with an original posting and then a series of comments) and a wiki (postings updated and altered as time goes on, but possible to see the history).

Starting with a small piece of the Mishna there are a whole series of commentries on, written over hundreds of years and many places. Commentaries are continuing to be written on it, so that the discussion continues. An interesting article showing some the parts and a translation of a page (though with embedded Hebrew in the translation) can be found at http://www.templesanjose.org/JudaismInfo/Torah/Talmud.htm