Table of Contents:

1. History of the encyclopedia

            A. Knowledge is power- The history of knowledge, databases from the early days of man through the Middle Ages

            B. Lineage if Encyclopedia’s – Natural History, Britainica, and Wikipedia

            C. Evolution of the encyclopedia – It’s role throughout history, particularly as it pertains to freedom of peoples

2. Wikipedia and the democratization of the encyclopedia

            A. before the internet revolution – The way data used to be compiled and collected, subjective versus objective information

            B. Wikipedia now – Online uses, research and journalism, general knowledge

            C. Wikipedia data collection- Wikipedia and encyclopedias once enlightened people, who used it to spread democracy, now, Wikipedia uses the democratic process to collect knowledge

3. Wikipedia’s role in History from here on out

            A. Historical symbiosis with democratic process – From inception through French Revolution until the internet age

            B. Wikipedia’s role in recent history until now, and beyond – Problems in the Middle East, problems where democracy does not exist, spreading of knowledge

IS DEMOCRACY A TOOL OF KNOWLEDGE, OR IS KNOWLEDGE A TOOL OF DEMOCRACY? WIKIPEDIA, THE ENCYCLOPEDIA THAT HELPED TO ADVANCE DEMOCRACY BY COLLECTING INFORMATION, AND THEN DEMOCRATIZED THE WAY THAT INFORMATION WAS COLLECTED.

Since the dawn of man, humanity itself has strived to advance, reaching for the stars, often falling short, but in the end usually attaining its lofty goals. Humanity has managed to further its plight utilizing an evolutionary process which is based on the conquest of knowledge, achieving progress through trial and error, and then passing these findings on for subsequent generations to school itself from. Man has advanced throughout the ages simply by passing much of this knowledge from one generation to the next. In effect, mankind has improved its plight by the collection of knowledge, the archiving, and the teaching of it. As far back (1) as the Paleolithic period (40,000 to 10,000 BC) Neanderthals’ began scribbling images and pictures on rock walls and floor coverings. This was an orchestrated attempt, albeit very rudimentary, to leave one’s knowledge existing outside oneself for another to find and learn from. These were the first history books and almanacs. In fact, cave art had its very own renaissance period per se, between 18,000 and 10,000 BC in Europe. These paintings were so systemized and united in their narrative that the works amassed during this period are referred to as being derived from the Magdalenian art system, the longest used system of communication in the history of this planet. The sublimity and aesthetic value of the drawings plays a very little part in cave art’s significance, though, as it does to the history of mankind. The true importance of this very simple artwork was its use as an archiving tool which passed information on to subsequent generations. The implications presented by the ability to store and pass data to future cultures in any capacity was boundless, and has yielded most of the technological fruit that mankind has been lucky enough to harvest.

As mankind’s ability to accrue and communicate data has progressed, so has mankind itself. When he drew stick figures on rock walls, he struggled to master fire and to create the simple wheel, by the time mankind began coding incomprehensible languages into supercomputers, he routinely took trips to the stars that he’d tried to reach for so long. Think as a child, act as a child, think as an adult, you can figure out ways to get children to work for you and your productivity can increase substantially. It took nearly 40,000 years to master cave art. Naturally, during that time the progress of mankind was slow and laborious. This rudimentary art was neither very informative nor did it reach too many people outside one’s own tribe. It was static data, since it could not be moved from camp to camp. With the discovery of papyrus in Late Egypt, man’s fate was hastened. The tantalizing seeds that led to the growth of the information age were firmly planted, by the time they took root in the late twentieth century, mankind had mastered communication and technology via the ability to teach and learn, to chronicle and archive every mighty conquest and great debacle so that the former might be repeated and the latter might be avoided. There became an ability to not only store information, but to create and to transport these records with the greatest of ease. In a period of a few thousand years mankind flourished, and civilization as we know it began to take shape. Certainly the advent of the printing press, and more recently the computer, have sped the process of data assimilation and its communication by leaps and bounds. The plight of mankind has progressed correspondingly. By the time great conquerors began to control vast portions of the planet, utilizing historical fact as a blueprint for domination, it became apparent that indeed, knowledge was not only life, but power itself!

Alexander the great, one of the greatest military collectors of record and historical fact, took great pleasure in amassing perhaps the most glorious library ever known to man until recent times. Followed by Ptolemy I, (2) the library amassed over 700,000 works. Unfortunately the library burned to the ground in a great fire, perhaps as a fitting symbolic demise to the childhood of mankind, but this initial attempt at amassing knowledge, data, and artifacts from around the world did not go to waste. Indeed, it was Alexander’s work that helped to lay the foundation for the modern encyclopedia, and helped to pave the way for mankind’s adolescence. Today the encyclopedia most assuredly has become a transportable Alexander’s Library for anyone to learn from or refer to, full of history, knowledge, and fact, imported and assimilated from around the world.

Wikipedia is one of the first great encyclopedias, Published in France between 1751 and 1780, the Encyclopédie, Ou Dictionnaire Raisonné Des Sciences, Des Arts Et Des Métiers, (3) (meaning: Encyclopedia, or a systematic dictionary of the sciences, arts, and crafts) was amassed and edited by Denis Diderot. The enormous collection was composed of 35 volumes. It was not alone in its existence, there were other encyclopedias going as far back as Natural History by Pliny, and the Routledge Encyclopedias that were created during medieval times. There was, and still is of course, the Enclopedia Britanica, Wikipedia’s chief competition. The Britanica was first published in 1768 as a direct British response to Diderot’s popular work. Indeed, it has proven to be a polar opposite in most every way, symbolizing the late aristocratic scholarly archives of the Middle Ages, while the Encyclopédie has grown to symbolize the democratic accrual and distribution of knowledge. The first real Encyclopedia of the modern era, the book that gave the modern encyclopedia its form, is Chambers’ Cyclopedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, published in two volumes in London in 1728.

The difference between Wikipedia, however, and all of the other encyclopedias, is its great association with democratization as well as the effect that it has had on both the democratic process and the history of the world.

Diderot’s work is largely credited with bringing about the movement known as the enlightenment which led directly to the French Revolution (5). In fact, many French Enlightenment authors, including the great Voltaire and Rousseau, contributed to the Encyclopédie. Much as Luther translated the Bible from Latin to German so that peasants could read and interpret the book for themselves, Diderot assimilated and disseminated knowledge that had been reserved as sole property of the hierarchy, aristocracy, and royalty of eighteenth century France. Information until that time was passed on as a birthright much like titles and land, helping to keep power and wealth in the hands of those that already possessed it. Education, and the lack of it, was the whip that kept most of mankind slave to a few wealthy families. With the Encyclopédie, the common man was then capable of learning and deciphering what course was best for them. That course was a democratic path to freedom. Again, knowledge was power, and in this case, power in the form of an educated public led to freedom.  The Encyclopédie was to the French Revolution what Marx’s Communist Manifesto was to its Russian counterpart. Its publication led to the fostering and acceptance of democratic power much the same as Marx’s work paved the way for Socialism, Nazism, and Communism. In effect, it is the democratic Bible, at least, the Old Testament version, a sacrament upon which the faith and interpretation of the modern democratic process has been built. Of course, just as mankind has progressed along with his mastery of technology, so has the assimilation of fact. Encyclopedias these days are much more accurate, up to date, and pertinent. They are a whole different entity than they were in Diderot’s day, and again, Wikipedia has been at both the forefront of change while being closely associated with the advancement of the practice of democracy.

In the past, in the case of the pre internet version of Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia was edited by one person (6), usually Diderot. This was the case for most encyclopedias. Either one editor or a few editors had the final say on what went into the tomes, which were derived from a handful of scholars’ interpretations of historical fact. Quite naturally, there were many detractors to this system, even in the cases of the popular Encyclopédie as well as that of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Many thought that Diderot’s work held too strong of a Protestant bent, while the Encyclopedia Britannica was accused of focusing on British viewpoints, with British spellings. The fact is, until the resurrection of Wikipedia and its current online inception, all encyclopedias were created subjectively. That is, they were either assimilated by one or a few scholars, and were most certainly edited, polished, or completed by an editor or at best, a few editors. This practice allows itself to be swayed by one person’s subjective viewpoint, which can lead to conflicts of interest when it comes to archiving unadulterated fact versus opinion. While the Encyclopedia Britannica has staid the subjective course, and has grown into a stale empire that belongs to one billionaire, Jacqui Safra, Wikipedia has morphed and adapted itself to the computer age.

Following its history and lineage in its current inception, Wikipedia utilized the democratic process it once helped birth by having contributors assemble the online encyclopedia themselves. Utilizing the connectivity of the information age, the ability for anyone anywhere with an internet connection to pass information on instantly, data is collected from around the globe and assembled as Wikipedia, the Online Encyclopedia. Effectively Wikipedia is now assembled from the masses, by the masses, and for the masses, thanks to technology, and has essentially democratized the process of collecting, assimilating, and archiving historical data.

Wikipedia in its new form was launched on January 15^th 2001. The site was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, though it was not the first web-based encyclopedia of its kind. Everything2, which launched in 1998, first explored the idea of interactive information gathering. It aspired to be a global communal encyclopedia, collecting data from around the world, but through the course of its own natural evolution, has become more of an interactive forum which features news, diaries, blogs, and articles of fiction. Since Wikipedia’s inception, Everything2’s aspiration to become the one great global interactive encyclopedia has disappeared, obliterated by Wikipedia’s popularity. Wikipedia itself originated as Nupedia, founded by Wales and Sanger, but it was not interactive. Instead, much like all its predecessors in print, it was largely written by scholars and experts and was selectively edited for content. Since its internet metamorphosis, the benefits for Wikipedia have been vast. The democratized process of gathering information has involved millions of unpaid contributors, and the site’s patronage and usage has grown at an astounding rate. Wikipedia recently announced that it has collected 1.5 million entries on its English site alone. This figure rises to 4.5 million on various sites around the world, and its articles are translated into at least 250 different languages. Wikpedia (7) is highly regarded by the journalistic community of the modern era. In the information age the internet is probably the greatest tool used in journalism. You can see what’s happening around the world in an instant, and all of the history you need for reference lies right at your fingertips. Wikipedia is exceptionally easy to use, as its articles are hyperlinked to other reference articles. A journalist can verify fact and assemble details without ever leaving the Wikipedia site! With the popularity and instant gratification of the internet, Wikipedia has become a cultural phenomenon, and continues a symbiotic relationship with the democratic process that began with Diderot’s work. Beginning with the French Revolution, building up to its current online edition, Wikipedia has not only inspired democracy, revolution, and freedom, but it has become the epitome of the democratic process itself. Wikipedia has come to symbolize the shared wealth of knowledge, the encyclopedia edited by the many instead of the few.

In fact, it has even played a part in current geopolitical practices, being viewed by those that resent democracy as a thoroughly democratic and evil mechanism. Recently, both the Chinese and Iranian governments have tried to block access to Wikipedia. Is Wikipedia that much of a threat to the welfare of despotic governments? It certainly seems to be that much of a tool of freedom for others. Is its existence as an interactive democratizing process a mirror of the West’s democratic principles, or is it a shadow of the West’s growing stranglehold on culture? Perhaps the original Encyclopédie foretold its own prophecy, that eventually it would inspire democratic revolution not only in France, but around the world. While certain governments have tried to block its citizens from using Wikipedia, it is impossible to block anyone with access to the internet from using it. Just as underground texts such as the Bible and the Encyclopédie helped to pool and disseminate knowledge in the common vernacular of its time, freeing peoples trapped by the yoke of misinformation, Wikipedia is doing much the same online. It is spreading the practice of democratization by its very existence as an interactive encyclopedia to places where freedom of thought is shunned and ostracized.

The future seems bright for both Wikipedia and democracy. The interactive website grows in popularity and usefulness every day. It is an entity that feeds itself growth by attaining and distributing knowledge. Whether you are contributing an article or taking extracting information from it, you are participating in the democratic process just by using Wikipedia. With visions of hard copy available on CD-Rom’s in the near future, Wikipedia will be able to infiltrate all corners of the globe. Soon it will be accessible to anyone with a computer, even the internet won’t be required to glean its knowledge. Much like those encyclopedias written by Diderot in eighteenth century France made precious information available to the common man, enabling him with the power of knowledge, Wikipedia is doing the same for the commoner today. Hopefully the repercussions for democratic revolution around the world will hold true, though maybe this time it would be nice if it happened without all the violence!

Bibliography:

(1) “They were created during the Upper Palaeolithic period (40,000 to 10,000 BC), and the best were done by what we call the Magdalenians (from the name of a site), peoples who flourished in Europe from 18,000 to 10,000 BC. Such works have a unity, and can be described as the Magdalenian art system, the first in human history. it was also the longest, lasting for more than two thirds of the total time when humans have produced art.” From Art: A New History, published by Harper/Collins, 2003. Paul Johnson.

(2) “Founded by Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC, built and enlarged by Ptolemy I, Alexander's successor, the city's library comprised perhaps as many as 700,000 manuscripts - the whole corpus of knowledge accumulated by ancient philosophers, scientists and poets.” From Alexander's library rises from the ashes, Published in Templarser, 2006. Alan Philps and Alasdair Palmer.

(3) “Encyclopedia, or a systematic dictionary of the sciences, arts, and crafts”

Encyclopédie, Ou Dictionnaire Raisonné Des Sciences, Des Arts Et Des Métiers Published in France between 1751 and 1780. Denis Diderot.

(4) The Cambridge Medieval History. Published by Cambridge University Press in 1911-1936. Edited by Robert Fossier.

(5) The Encyclopedia of Marxism, published online, 1999-2004. Edited by Brian Basgen and Andy Blunden.

(6) Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, published online, 2001-present.

(7) ‘Wikipedia and the rise of Participatory Journalism’   published online in Media Digest. Andrew Lih.