13th
Who is collecting the world’s knowledge?
How are knowledge archives structured and designed?
Who determines the access to this knowledge?
“Knowledge is power. If one possesses a collection of the ‘universal knowledge’ of the world, one has ultimate power. Establishing comprehensive, global collections of knowledge already fascinated mankind thousands of years ago. Today, modern communication and information technologies offer quick and prompt collecting, high memory capacities and wide-ranging access. In addition, globalization and the Internet advance a mentality which moves away from the local and regional towards the international and universal. Collections of knowledge, such as archives, encyclopaedias, databases and libraries, also follow this trend. They are engaged in a race against time in both the technological and creative area.
Their clearly formulated aim is to establish for us a complete and up-to-date collection of ‘universal knowledge’.” About the book
Quote from Interview with Rop Gongrijp, hacker and activist:
Q: Do you believe that hackers have universal access to information because they can hack themselves through political and technological borders?
R. Gongrijp: “Not necessarily…But I do believe that, because so much of our culture and our world is now technical, hackers are often the only people truly understanding what’s going on. Hackers are the only ones who haven’t signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement regarding technology. They’re not the only ones in the know but they are the only ones who are going to tell you because everybody else has interests that conflict with telling the truth.”
