Endemic

Today I finally did what I should have done a long time ago: I donated to Wikipedia.

I strongly believe that all human knowledge should be free. Wikipedia is the leading project to help make human knowledge free and accessible. We still have a lot more human knowledge to unlock, but Wikipedia has been an indispensable tool for millions of people all over the world. Making knowledge only available to those who can afford to purchase it or who have direct access to a large, physical library isn’t ideal. The Internet is the perfect place to store and disseminate the world’s knowledge.

And that knowledge should be free for all.

Wikipedia still has a long way to go. There is still a lot more knowledge that needs to placed on it and much of the best content is only in English. There are all issues with the editing and writing processes. But, overall,  it’s a fantastic start.

Beyond sites like Wikipedia, it’s my dream that we can make education free and accessible for all. I don’t mean by government subsidies to attend existing educational institutions but rather by harnessing the power of crowd sourcing and distributed knowledge.

Wikipedia and similar sites can serve as educational tools (I’d donate to Encyclopedia Britannica too if they changed their business model), but I believe there is a place for creating wiki-text books and wiki-classes. There will always be a place for physical institutions and in-person classes (and smart universities such as MIT are already making many of their course lectures free for all), but I believe we can make great strides in educating people around the world by creating a strong and vibrant wiki-university (or better yet, wiki-universities) that combines the knowledge of online encyclopedias with wiki-text books (professors and other experts could get together to write these), wiki-classes (educators could design classes based on wiki-texts, wiki-encyclopedia articles, Web sites, etc), wiki-degrees (a combination of wiki-classes) and more. People around the world could even get together to work on group projects and research together.

Traditional educational systems will continue to produce many of the best and brightest around the world, but opening up education has the ability to lift up many who could not afford a top-notch education or don’t have access to one. In addition, I strongly believe that opening up education will also encourage people to continue their educations for their entire lifetimes. After all, if the last time you were educated was when you were 21 — or 17 — then you won’t learn much in your lifetime.

It’s important to remember that knowledge will provide light for all. Let’s illuminate the world.

Tagged: crowd sourcing, distributed knowledge, education, knowledge, open source, school, Wikipedia