To Organize The World's Information

It would be like a search engine for ideas and concepts.  Perhaps something like public roam graphs will be the solution to this, but there are infinite ways to approach it.

This example illustrates some of the value of organizing information. It seems obvious that having information organized would be valuable, but in Alexandria we can see what that practically looks like. Because people were able to get access to the knowledge and information related to things they were working on, they could make progress much faste... See more

Why would anyone want such a thing? For the American Revolution example, you might be interested in seeing all the perspectives on that topic. But more generally, you might want it out of pure curiosity. The same curiosity that might grip you if you’ve ever perused a library.

An encyclopedia is an attempt to summarize all knowledge. It is focused on giving factual explanations and descriptions of various things. It doesn’t go too in depth, and it doesn’t allow for opinion. The popular web equivalent is Wikipedia which allows anyone to contribute their knowledge on any subject.

A really long time ago, we didn’t have much writing, and the information was passed down orally. Then we had writing, but it was scattered and disorganized. You had no way to know what writing existed, what thoughts people had already, and generally what was out there.

In short, the organization and accessibility of information enables innovation, new discoveries, curiosity, exploration, and much more.

The world has benefited greatly in the past from having information organized and made accessible. When information is organized, people can easily find similar ideas to build on top of, explore their curiosities, and discover new things. Knowledge is power, and organized information makes the attainment of knowledge far more efficient.The Research... See more

We take it for granted now that we can go to Wikipedia and read about how the U.S. Political System works with no hassle at all, but not too long ago, information was a lot harder to obtain. The gutenberg press wasn’t invented until the 1400s, and before that, it was a lot harder to find copies of important books and content that you wanted to read... See more

Around 300BC, one of the most ambitious projects of all time was undertaken in the Greek-Egyptian city of Alexandria. The Ptolemies wanted to create the intellectual capital of the world, and so they established the famous LIbrary of Alexandria. This was not the first library, but what made it interesting was their extremely ambitious goal. They wa... See more