[ 4] Berners-Lee, T. Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by Its Inventor. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999, 67-84.

[ 5] Nelson, T.H. Literary Machines: The Report On, and Of, Project Xanadu Concerning Word Processing, Electronic Publishing, Hypertext, Thinkertoys, Tomorrow’s Intellectual Revolution, and Certain Other Topics Including Knowledge, Education and Freedom. 91.1. Sausalito, Ca.: Mindful Press, 1992, third chapter zero, 13.

[ 6] Wilson, D. and A. M. Reynard. “Interpedia Frequently Asked Questions and Answers.” Discussion Group. 15 Feb. 1994. comp.infosystems. interpedia. 27 Oct. 2005. <http:// groups.google.de/ groups?selm=CL9x0u. B4x%40acsu.buffalo. edu&output=gplain> See questions 1, 1.2, 1.1, and 4. 5.

the Web as we know it, but not as it was first conceived. In his memoir of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee describes his motivation for the Web as “a universal medium for sharing information.” While today’s Web was seen as a hobbled upstart by hypertext pioneer Ted Nelson, it falls short of even Berners-Lee’s original vision, to which he now refers in its richer potential as the Semantic Web.

In any case, despite the Web’s early limitations, or perhaps because of them, in January 1993 there were nearly 50 different Web browsers. These were inspired by Berners-Lee’s original Web client and more or less implemented the early specifications for HTTP (network transport), HTML (content markup), and URL (resource locators/identifiers). However, one client was to stand out: Mosaic, and subsequently Netscape. Unfortunately, some Mosaic developers seemed intent on overshadowing the World Wide Web and failed to implement the critical feature of editing the Web: “Marc and Eric [Mosaic developers] explained that they had looked at that option and concluded that it was just impossible. It can’t be done. This was news to me, since I had already done it with the World Wide Web [client] on the NeXT though admittedly for a simpler version of HTML.” [ 4] Consequently, for many people the Web became a browsing-only medium until the arrival of the Wiki Wiki Web.

Would Interpedia be part of the Internet, or, if it referenced existing services, would it be something “that ends up being the net” [ 6]? When the Web became undeniably predominant a few years later, projects like the Distributed Encyclopedia and GNUPedia expected to naturally take advantage of one of the Web’s greatest features: decentralization. Different articles would be maintained by single authors on unrelated websites. This is unlike Wikipedia, which is created through fine-grained and incremental collaborations by many at a single site.

It was not until the new millennium, with the Web almost ubiquitous and free and open source software providing the collaborative inspiration, that a serious commitment to a free online encyclopedia was made. After Larry Sanger earned his Ph.D. in philosophy, he wrote to Jimmy Wales, entrepreneur and fellow philosophy listserv subscriber, about a possible successor to his Y2K newsletters—the year 2000 had passed without much incident and Sanger was looking for new work. Wales counter-proposed his encyclopedia idea and asked Sanger if he would be interested in leading the project. So in 2000 Wales hired Sanger to launch and manage Nupedia.com, “building the finest encyclopedia in the history of humankind.” [ 7] But Nupedia struggled: Its underlying collaborative software lacked functionality, and it was difficult to procure commitments from expert volunteers for the significant work entailed in writing and reviewing articles. The universal vision, providing a low-cost encyclopedia to “schoolhouses across the world,” seemed reasonable. The technology, too, seemed capable of inexpensively supplying information throughout the world, and of facilitating the work of distant contributors. Yet something more was needed and it would be found only by what seems to have been an accident.

[ 7] Shannon, P. “Regarding Sanger and Shannon’s Review of Y2K News Reports.” Forum. 11 Jan. 2000. Time Bomb 2000. 27 Oct. 2005. <http://www. greenspun.com/bboard/ q-and-a-fetch-msg. tcl?msg_id=002I9H>; and Sanger, L. “I Am a Clueless Newbie.” Mailing list. 9 Mar. 2000. Nupedia-L. 7 June 2006. <http:// web.archive.org/ web/20030822044803/ http://www.nupedia. com/pipermail/nupedia- l/2000-March/000003. html>

An Internet Encyclopedia

While the technologies of the earlier half of the century failed to satisfy, computer networks inspired a new generation of information universalists. Consider how similar Ted Nelson sounds to his predecessors on declaring, “We have to save mankind from an almost certain and immediately approaching doom through the application, expansion and dissemination of intelligence.” [ 5]

Although the idea of an Internet encyclopedia nearly coincides with the Internet’s birth, an “Interpedia” became a topic of public discussion in the early 1990s. However, at that time there were almost too many technical options: Would it be based on Gopher, WAIS, or the new thing called the Web? In addition to the confounding array of options, Doug Wilson, maintainer of the Interpedia FAQ, wrote, “the term Interpedia is ambiguous—to some it means the text, to some software, and to others what we will have when we have both.” [ 6] A consequence, in part, of this technical uncertainty was an ambiguity in vision.

Wiki and Wikipedia

“Wiki wiki” means “superfast” in the Hawaiian language, and Ward Cunningham chose the name for his collaborative Web software in 1995 to indicate the ease with which one could edit pages. Cunningham, an advocate of software design patterns, attended a conference on pattern languages during which he agreed to collect and post user-submitted patterns if contributors sent him a structured text file, which he could then