We are starting with mathematics, but plan to expand to all other topics as well. If you are interested in contributing, join our slack channel or newsletter (https://arbital.com/newsletter/). We are planning to roll out small projects soon, which people can contribute to.
Interesting. How does arbital see itself in relation to Wikipedia's math pages? It seems like you are trying to make it more accessible, like the Wikipedia simplified English descriptions
On a more serious note, although it superficially sounds like he's talking about Wikipedia (in 1937... WHOAH) he probably isn't. The idea he's describing seems to be a very elite-driven technocratic idea, suffused with the sorts of imperialist ideals you'd expect an educated European in 1937 to expound.
>The idea he's describing seems to be a very elite-driven technocratic idea
Right, he imagined a top-down organization that collected and curated information for the benefit of humanity. It seems like the trigger for HG Wells imagination was the "microfilm". Using that technology, he could see how vast quantities of information (old books in worldwide collections) could be photographed, compressed into organizable filing system, and centralized in one place.
The parallel of that to Wikipedia would be cheap hard drives holding terabytes of information.
However, that real radical innovation with Wikipedia was the bottom-up crowdsourced contributions. People thought an encyclopedia authored by anybody without credentials would lead to useless trash. Amazingly, that prediction didn't happen.
Personal anecdote.... I have contributed to several wiki articles and in one entry about a novel, I corrected a paragraph that had incorrect information. I simply rewrote the entire paragraph. At first, I thought a subsequent editor would delete it since my edit came from an anonymous contributor. (I was not logged in and only the ip address is recorded in the revision history which means it might be flagged as "drive by vandalism"). It's been several years and I occasionally revisit that page. Not only has my prominent edit stood, but others have continued working around it. It's a weird accomplishment -- a 21st century version of "Kilroy was here."
What he's talking about actually seems like a sort of inevitability (which still hasn't happened yet, but will): it's basically the (technocratic, top-down) Dewey Decimal "filing" standard, but where each library has a copy of every book (and other media), instead of having to request inter-library loans.
Soon enough, it won't make much sense to talk about "what's available at your local library branch", instead thinking about "what's available in The Library."
Of course, most things will only be available to be borrowed digitally, but that's not usually a problem if you had a need for the information rather than a desire for the aesthetic experience of reading.
(And hopefully that will include useful [e.g. 3D when necessary] digitizations of all the old documents and artefacts that are currently housed, for their own protection, in nobody-can-look-at-them archives within libraries.)
Well Wikipedia is more curated than people really imagine.
Yes, you can start writing an article on anything. But don't expect it to last long until someone comes along and flags it in violation of some guideline or other.
Also, most of the more historically significant articles are padlocked. Thus not just anyone can go about editing them.
TL;DR: The British publishers of Chamber's Encyclopaedia were outraged to find subtantial and ideological edits to numerous articles within their encyclopedia.
I found the topic of particular interest as the first article listed as among those changed was among the topics I was hoping to see detailed in the publication.
There's some additional history (I'm in the midst of compiling more background), but the fact that the American publisher was backing economic viewpoints strongly opposed to those gaining the upper hand in Britain may just possibly have had something to do with this.
Are there any projects to build a decentralized Wikipedia? Perhaps using ipfs or similar technology. I did some brief searching but couldn't find anything. It would be a great step forward to ensuring we have a permanent indestructible knowledgebase anyone can access.
Wikipedia at least does offer full content torrents now & again so the internet can back up their work or have local mirrors, which would make it survive catastrophic failure of Wikipedia itself.
Before you jump to Bush, Licklider, "the internet", Wikipedia and the like for recent analogies, it's worth remembering that some years before Wells actually wrote this, Paut Otlet's Mundaneum and other related "world brain" projects were underway. Their fruits were very much in place and functioning, and were tragically destroyed during the Second World War, ironically the enabler of the information technologies we so admire today.
I love articles like this as it makes me wonder what article of today will be seen as profound or rudimentary a century from now - talk of DAO's, holidays on Mars, or how the Blockchain will cure all ills?
Ted: A 1986 world book encyclopædia. Just the one I grew up with.
Marshall: An encyclopædia?
Ted: [laughing] Oh! You think it should be pronounced encyclo-pee-dia. I'ts a common mistake. But if you look at that squished together "ae" symbol in this here encyclopædia, you'll learn that it's a ligature derived from the Anglo-Saxon rune ash...
[shelf breaks and falls]
Marshall: You know, you're gonna have to pædia for that.
We are starting with mathematics, but plan to expand to all other topics as well. If you are interested in contributing, join our slack channel or newsletter (https://arbital.com/newsletter/). We are planning to roll out small projects soon, which people can contribute to.