Over 5,000 books make up the library at the local police station in Tirupur, a small town in Tamil Nadu state of India. PHOTO: BetterIndia
Can libraries be taken out of the four walls of an educational institution? Can it find a place in the midst of communities, accessible not only for children but for all who seek better understanding, greater learning? Like these 5,000 books that traveled from the US to a tiny police station in Tamil Nadu, India.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy now contains nearly 1,500 entries, and changes are made daily. (Installation by Marcos Saboya and Gualter Pupo. Photo by Reuters/Olivia Harris)
The Internet is a goldmine of information, yes. In a parallel dimension, it lags in providing authoritative, rigorously accurate knowledge, at no cost to readers. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has changed all that, beginning two decades ago.
The story of how the SEP is run, and how it came to be, shows that it is possible to create a less trashy internet—or at least a less trashy corner of it. A place where actual knowledge is sorted into a neat, separate pile instead of being thrown into the landfill. Where the world can go to learn everything that we know to be true. Something that would make humans a lot smarter than the internet we have today.
Organikos 