On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 11:38 AM, CherianTinu Abraham
<tinucherian(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The Indian Express : "Would Gandhi have been a Wikipedian?"
( Article by Achal Prabhala)
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/would-gandhi-have-been-a-wikipedian/90050…
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/would-gandhi-have-been-a-wikipedian/90050…
( Single Page Version)
In 1941, a young Argentinian librarian who would soon go completely blind
published a story about the futility of the “total” library. His inspiration
was Kurd Lasswitz, a 19th century German philosopher and science-fiction
pioneer, whose own idea of a “universal” library was a mathematical
nightmare of frighteningly large but finite proportions. The writer was
Jorge Luis Borges, and his story, The Library of Babel, (taking off from the
mythical Tower of Babel, a place of linguistic dysfunction) spawned a minor
publishing industry of its own. Borges’ library was not a happy place: its
chronically overworked librarians were suicidal, thuggish cults periodically
vandalised the books, people spent lifetimes searching for a catalogue
without success, and — wondrous as it all was — no one expected to find
anything useful there ever.
Eighty years after it was written, Borges’ feverish fantasy is a cautionary
tale for those who are tempted to take Internet-era fantasies at their word.
When a Google executive was asked to describe the perfect search engine, he
is reported to have said, “It would be like the mind of God.” Preposterous,
yes; but also exciting. And anyone excited enough to adopt this as a mission
statement would do well to have a cold shower, and heed Borges’ conclusion
on the topic — “The library is unlimited and cyclical”.
Happily, there are more human, and altogether more humble manifestations of
the desire to learn and share and prosper. In ancient history, the
pre-biblical city of Babylon was a working counterpoint to the biblical
Tower of Babel; a bustling site where diverse crowds made good together. In
the present day, we are no closer to knowing everything, but we have
Wikipedia: a bustling website where diverse people from everywhere in the
world create miracles. Wikipedia’s humility is the flip-side to its success,
and it comes from wanting to be precisely the opposite of the total library:
call it a perpetually partial library, if you will. No one who has spent
even a minute contributing anything to it would dare assume that the job is
done, the perspective complete, or the game won.
Eleven years ago to this day, Jimmy Wales typed out “Hello world!” and
Wikipedia was born. In 1989, Richard Stallman pioneered a form of copyright
licensing for software that allowed programmers and users to do virtually
anything they liked with it. This formed the basis for free and open source
software, or FOSS. In 1995, Ward Cunningham used FOSS to build the
underlying software for a novel form of collaboration — the “wiki”. By this
time, the benefits of a generous copyright licence to software were
apparent, and it was extended to mainstream culture — to words, sounds and
images. Wikipedia was among the early exponents of this free culture
experiment, quickly followed by sister projects of the Wikimedia Foundation:
Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks and more.
Wikipedia’s collaborative system of knowledge has exceeded everyone’s
wildest expectations. Today, it is the world’s fifth most visited website —
and the sole non-profit upstart in the oligarchical fiefdom that is our
online landscape. There are thriving communities of volunteers in countries
like India and South Africa, among several other places, who are helping us
discover that learning does not have to be a passive act, and that the value
of generosity can be productive and revolutionary at once.
Interestingly enough, it was about a hundred years ago that a young,
idealistic lawyer set off on a similar journey. Affected by colonialism in
his home, India, and faced with debilitating segregation laws in his adopted
home, South Africa, he saw the productive and revolutionary potential in
generous knowledge. Over a long sea journey from London to Cape Town, he
wrote down his ideas on self-determination and independence. The young
lawyer was, of course, Gandhi, and his book, Hind Swaraj, would go on to
become the intellectual blueprint for the Indian freedom movement. The
original was written in Gujarati in 1909. One year later, it was translated
into English and published as Indian Home Rule. On the cover of the first
edition of this English translation is a prominent, if unusual, copyright
legend. It reads, “No Rights Reserved”.
This is news to me. here is the link: