RourkeMon, Mar 24, 2008 I remember reading somewhere that Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, was considering licensing out the entire encyclopedia to robot designers. Eventually he hoped that all ranges of domestic robots would have built within them the knowledge of Wikipedia.
If all books that have reached their copyright age could also be included in that compendium then it would be quite easy for anyone who could afford a home robot to have access to the majority of human knowledge. Here's to asking your vacuum cleaner to read you Edwin Abbot's Flatland, or have your fridge dictate the figure of Pi to 10,000 decimal places.
(I think the Jimmy Wales/robot article was this one. There is also an interesting Q & A with him here.)
I remember reading somewhere that Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, was considering licensing out the entire encyclopedia to robot designers. Eventually he hoped that all ranges of domestic robots would have built within them the knowledge of Wikipedia.
If all books that have reached their copyright age could also be included in that compendium then it would be quite easy for anyone who could afford a home robot to have access to the majority of human knowledge. Here's to asking your vacuum cleaner to read you Edwin Abbot's Flatland, or have your fridge dictate the figure of Pi to 10,000 decimal places.
(I think the Jimmy Wales/robot article was this one. There is also an interesting Q & A with him here.)