Today I learned that the first issue of Encyclopedia Britannica was 28 volumes and contained 71,000 articles. I think that’s just amazing. Not only that there was so much knowledge physically laid out, but that people in the 18th century were able to collect that much, is nothing short of shocking to me as a modern.

We learned the the encyclopedia was the first use of what we’d call hypertext, text that leads you to other text on hand, etc. This connects directly with Wikipedia, our modern encyclopedia that surpassed its Britannica ancestor. You can read an article and click any hyperlink on a text that will take you to another page and it just goes on, seemingly, forever.

Wikipedia was used the perfect example of crowdsourcing, collecting information from a wide group of people who are able to edit and add freely. This idea is promoted by Richard Stallman, who believes that the more freely an idea is expressed, the better it gets. He helped popularize the “Four Freedoms of Software,” and for decades has fought any kind of user restrictions and copyright.

Lebra Office was given as an example of free, crowdsourced software, and I think Zotero (which I use) also fits into that mold. It’s an interesting, revolutionary idea, and from my minimal understanding of it, I support its continual success.