Happy birthday, Jimmy Wales (father of Wikipedia)

2001, 1 year after the creation of Wikipedia

Although Jimmy started with securities trading and a search engine “for men,” yet for me he is the founding father of the most capacious resource, an invaluable treasure trove of links to primary sources (and I also use Wikipedia as a translator).

Let Jimmy is the face of begging for fundraising, let him be accused of having broken the prize for one president to the prime minister to the president and the rules of biography for money, but I am still glad that I got to speak to Wales in Pushkin (of course by social engineering).
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He did not earn a billion dollars, he earned recognition of billions of people, brought out the principles of Wiki technology ( Iceland wrote a constitution on wiki technology). He also earned the Niels Bohr Medal and a place in the Internet Hall of Fame .

The Wikipedia article on Jimmy Wales is in 132 languages.

Wikipedia is "a symbol of the era of interaction in which we live, and it is not just a tool, it is the realization of a dream as ancient as human intelligence and the collections of the Alexandrian Library" UNESCO statement

“Jimmy Wales is the typical genius of the electronic age. A shy high school student, an avid computer game lover, fan of the freedom-loving philosophy of Ayn Rand, a supporter of an anarchic social order, Wales conceived Wikipedia at his leisure, not even suspecting that it would become the largest network project. <...> The most interesting thing is that when Jimmy Wales was asked what the final goal of Wikipedia was, he said: “Nothing, one fun” ” Alexander Genis

Happy birthday, generous lifelong dictator of Wikipedia!

Performance on TED2005 (with Russian subtitles)


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