Wikipedia is probably one of the single products that have significantly changed the world. This website, which accumulates knowledge and provides it to everyone for free, joins a long line of revolutionary products that had made us who we are, and shaped civilization in a way that changed human life forever.
Let’s put them in context for a second:
- The Alphabet. The first Egyptians and Phoenicians, who revolutionized writing from hieroglyph-based to phonemic script, and ultimately given us the alphabet. This made reading and writing a significantly easier skill to master, and instead of learning thousands of images and hieroglyphs, reading and writing were reduced to identifying a couple of dozen symbols. Knowledge became more accessible to people all around the ancient world, and knowledge started to become the realm of humanity.
- Numerals. The ancient Babylonians gave us algebra, and opened up a new way for us to view the world with an advanced arithmetic system. And with the numeral system, which was first developed in ancient India, humanity was exposed to the wonders of mathematics, and the infinite possibilities it created.
- Law. Lawmakers and lawgivers, like Dracon and Solon of ancient Greece, had given us access to the law of the land. Law, which was a private practice known only to selected elite, was made public, readable, and accessible by all. Our lives as citizens were revolutionized with this basic freedom of knowledge
- Print. Johannes Gutenberg found an efficient way to spread the written word throughout the world with his printing press. By utilizing printing, books were no longer the sole property of monasteries and royalty, but spread across nations and continents. Literacy levels sprung almost immediately, allowing us to learn, improve and achieve.
- Public knowledge. Wikipedia’s achievement is no lesser than any of the above. This website has managed to turn human wisdom, learning and education into an organized, categorized and free enterprise. Knowledge is no longer the province of the few, but the realm of all humanity. It is available from any place on the planet, in numerous languages, and can be enriched by any one of us. Wikipedia has given us the freedom to learn, to grow, and to become better people by acquainting ourselves with our world and the civilizations within it.
Imagine a world without any of the above discoveries and developments – a world without literacy, science, knowledge, learning, law, and civilization. Denying the world of Wikipedia is no different.
We owe much of our children’s future to Wikipedia. So let’s help them help us, and let’s all take part in this effort to make knowledge a public domain.
