Essays on Free Knowledge: The Origins of Wikipedia and the New Politics of Knowledge

For his long-awaited first book, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has revised some of his best essays on Wikipedia, intellectual autonomy, knowledge in the digital age, and how to fight back against the centralization of the Internet."A fundamental player in the history of the modern Internet" Salon"A philosopher who explores the very nature and sources of knowledge" Technology ReviewThe digital revolution has been corrupted. What began as a celebration of freedom has become a machine for monitoring and control. What began as history's greatest dream of enlightenment has been twisted into an anti-intellectual nightmare of indoctrination.In twelve essays, several already well-known but newly revised in this volume, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger stakes out a hard-headed position in favor of the ideals of the digital revolution. At the same time he firmly rejects the disastrous naïveté that would have us abandon wisdom and autonomy, ignore subversion by bad actors, and blindly trust unaccountable, giant corporations.Sanger concludes with a new essay on the problems facing the free Internet, available only in this book.The essays (270 pgs.) :The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia: A MemoirTwo Early Articles about WikipediaWikipedia's Original Neutrality PolicyWhy Neutrality?Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-ElitismHow the Internet Is Changing What (We Think) We KnowWho Says We Know: On the New Politics of KnowledgeIndividual Knowledge in the Internet AgeIs There a New Geek Anti-Intellectualism?Introducing the EncyclosphereDeclaration of Digital IndependenceThe Future of the Free Internet