The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

by James Gleick

Lewis Carroll, near the end of the nineteenth century, described in fiction the ultimate map, representing the world on a unitary scale, a mile to a mile: “It has never been spread out, yet. The farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight.” The point is not lost on Wikipedians. Some are familiar with a debate carried out by the German branch about the screw on the left rear brake pad of Ulrich Fuchs’s bicycle. Fuchs, as a Wikipedia editor, proposed the question, Does this item in the universe of objects merit its own Wikipedia entry? The screw was agreed to be small but real and specifiable. “This is an object in space, and I’ve seen it,” said Jimmy Wales. Indeed, an article appeared in the German Meta-Wiki (that is, the Wikipedia about Wikipedia) titled “Die Schraube an der hinteren linken Bremsbacke am Fahrrad von Ulrich Fuchs.” As Wales noted, the very existence of this article was “a meta-irony.” It was written by the very people who were arguing against its suitability. The article was not really about the screw, however. It is about a controversy: whether Wikipedia should strive, in theory or in practice, to describe the whole world in all its detail.