Wikipedia is needed now more than ever, 25 years on
- lastmansurfing
- Jan 29
- 1 min read
As social-media algorithms fuel extreme opinions and the Internet is flooded with low-quality information, increasingly generated with the aid of artificial-intelligence technologies, the world needs Wikipedia just as much — if not more — as it did at the time of the platform’s creation.
The start of the twenty-first century was a time of huge optimism in the web’s power and potential to share knowledge and bring information to vast numbers of people.
For the first time in recorded history, a technology could bring the sum total of human learning to anyone — and an Internet connection was the only requirement to access it.
People in businesses, homes, public libraries, schools and universities could see what was previously accessible to only a relative few.
Search engines such as AltaVista, Yahoo and Google were some of the main routes to discovering knowledge. So was the technology company Amazon, as an online retailer of books. And there was Wikipedia.
Read the full story | NATURE
