Wikipedia is 20, and its reputation has never been higher
The crowdsourced encyclopedia is a welcome oddity on the modern internet
LYING DRUNK in a field outside the Austrian city of Innsbruck in 1971, inspiration struck Douglas Adams, a science-fiction writer. He looked at his copy of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Europe”, and then up at the stars, and came up with the idea for a “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. It would be a (fictional) mixture of travel book and encyclopedia, but with an absurd-seeming twist: instead of being written by experts, anyone could contribute.
This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “The other tech giant”
From the January 9th 2021 edition
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