despre enciclopedii ...

Jimmy Wales , the creator of Wikipedia,
was honored by Time last week (adica pe la inceputul lunii mai, n.S. ) at a gala dinner for him and ninety-nine other of the world’s “most influential” people. The Time 100, as they were called, had been divided into categories that brought to mind a game of Trivial—or, in some cases, Serious—Pursuit: “Artists & Entertainers,” “Builders & Titans,” “Leaders & Revolutionaries.” Wales, according to Time, “is celebrated as a champion of Internet-enabled egalitarianism. He describes himself not as anti-elitist but as ‘anticredentialist.’ ”A fine credo, actually, for the evening: a sort of velvet-roped, live-action Wikipedia royale in which list members assessed fellow-partygoers, absent any particular qualification besides their mutual influentialness.
STARS on STARS, by Lauren Collins
(The New Yorker, Issue of 2006-05-22)


Un articol despre cum a aparut Wikipedia, despre toti pasionatii si nebunii implicati, amintind si de istoria primelor “impulsuri” enciclopedice in lume, datind de peste 2000 de ani, niciodata limitate de granite nationale sau de alt fel ... (nimic nou pe acest pamint, nici macar "global village")...

O spicuire doar:
“Among the first general reference works was Emperor’s Mirror, commissioned in 220 A.D. by a Chinese emperor, for use by civil servants. The quest to catalogue all human knowledge accelerated in the eighteenth century. In the seventeen-seventies, the Germans, champions of thoroughness, began assembling a two-hundred-and-forty-two-volume masterwork. A few decades earlier, Johann Heinrich Zedler, a Leipzig bookseller, had alarmed local competitors when he solicited articles for his Universal-Lexicon. His rivals, fearing that the work would put them out of business by rendering all other books obsolete, tried unsuccessfully to sabotage the project ...”

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de la Enciclopedii la Wikipedia ...