Essays on Free Knowledge: The Origins of Wikipedia and the New Politics of Knowledge

For his long-awaited first book, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has revised some of his best essays on Wikipedia, intellectual autonomy, knowledge in the digital age, and how to fight back against the centralization of the Internet.

A fundamental player in the history of the modern Internet Salon

A philosopher who explores the very nature and sources of knowledge Technology Review

The digital revolution has been corrupted. What began as a celebration of freedom has become a machine for monitoring and control. What began as history’s greatest dream of enlightenment has been twisted into an anti-intellectual nightmare of indoctrination.

In twelve essays, several already well-known but newly revised in this volume, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger stakes out a hard-headed position in favor of the ideals of the digital revolution. At the same time he firmly rejects the disastrous naivete that would have us abandon wisdom and autonomy, ignore subversion by bad actors, and blindly trust unaccountable, giant corporations.

Sanger concludes with a new essay on the problems facing the free Internet, available only in this book.

The essays (270 pgs.):

The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia: A Memoir Two Early Articles about Wikipedia Wikipedia’s Original Neutrality Policy Why Neutrality? Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism How the Internet Is Changing What (We Think) We Know Who Says We Know: On the New Politics of Knowledge Individual Knowledge in the Internet Age Is There a New Geek Anti-Intellectualism? Introducing the Encyclosphere Declaration of Digital Independence The Future of the Free Internet