If you are reading this on a screen - and even if you are not -, it is most likely that you have come across a page at some point dominated by a sphere composed of puzzle pieces with characters from different alphabets. From the history of Ponferrada to the classification of the Bulgarian league in the 2005-2006 season, through the Equivalence Theorem, that "free encyclopedia" called Wikipedia offers a myriad of topics shared by its own users. It is undoubtedly the most important example of a 'wiki': online publications whose content is created and edited by those who consume it.
A collaborative and open manifestation of knowledge that has decisively changed the way we acquire knowledge. Just 30 years ago, the launch of the first of these publications took place: WikiWikiWeb, the work of programmer Ward Cunningham (Michigan, USA, 1949).
He conceived it as a platform for computer scientists to share their doubts and inventions, without suspecting that his invention would revolutionize the dissemination of knowledge and, years later, would become a technology threatened by the giants of Silicon Valley.
It seems that the first 'wiki' was somewhat fortuitous. How did it all start? I was working in a research laboratory at Tektronix. It was in that context that we came across Xerox PARC's work on the Smalltalk programming language, on which they had spent ten years. I spent a few months researching until my company asked: "How can we condense what you learned in three months into two days?" That led us to explore new ways of communicating that knowledge.
What were those ways? We came across the work of architect and theorist Christopher Alexander. He was more focused on the development of livable environments in the big cities of Europe over thousands of years and the problems solved by those who built them. They were not architects, just people with the intention of living there. We saw an analogy between what Alexander and his team were doing studying the built world and what we were doing studying the software environment. Both of us were trying to find a way to encode our experiences so they would be available to others.
But how were those ideas of urbanism and architecture transferred to the digital environment?
We started discussing the idea of using pattern languages to describe something completely different. We studied Alexander's books and organized events, one-day workshops, and conferences. In that process, we created a mailing list and gathered about 500 people in it. The first conference was the Pattern Languages of Programs Conference, where we brought together people from around the world at the University of Illinois, with about a hundred attendees. The graduate students who helped us organize it explained to me that if we were really going to invent a new programming literature, we should name it as such.
How was the logistics for this new way of communicating?
I asked the people who had participated in the conference to send me the materials they had presented. I would take care of converting them to HTML and uploading them. I gave them simple instructions... and no one followed them. That's when I realized it was going to be a lot of work. The newest thing on the Web at that time was an element called a text area box, a text box where you could write directly. So I wrote a program that used it and thought that users could upload their own content. When they pressed the save button, they would see if they liked it, and if not, they would fix it. The idea was to remove myself from the process. So I announced on the list that I had created this and they could upload their own articles.
What would you say were the advantages of your invention?
I was smart enough to keep it extremely simple. So simple that anyone could see it and say, "Ward didn't put much effort into this, but I'm smart and I'll understand how it works." And they did. A couple of weeks after the announcement, I already had about 30 users who had entered and done interesting things and shared them with people they didn't know yet, but trusted because they shared the same vision: that computers should be programmed in a different way.
Where did the name 'wiki' come from?
I knew it was fast. Up to that point, I had spent weeks creating pages the slow way, having to connect to different types of computers and following a cumbersome process. But being able to write right where you read... that was magical. I had found something. And I kept repeating to myself: this is fast, it's agile. And I remembered this Hawaiian word, wiki, which means "quick." In Hawaii, when they want to say "very fast," they repeat it: "wikiwiki." I thought of the shuttle at Honolulu airport, which is also called Wiki Wiki. So I named it WikiWikiWeb.
Were you aware of the money your discovery would generate?
The first people who started tinkering with it told me, "I hope you patented this." But I didn't because I thought a patent doesn't give you money, you have to pay for it. Then, I would have to sell the idea to people with money and convince them that they want a website where anyone in the world could write. I didn't think that would be appealing to them. But I thought maybe it would serve as a calling card. I had access to these brilliant software developers, ready to change the world. And that's exactly what happened.
Changing the world, in what sense?
What happened was that people started writing about the future of computing with a vocabulary they had to invent themselves. And everyone else read in that vocabulary and learned from it. We focused on computing, but throughout the rest of my life, I have walked into conference rooms, seeing people write on the whiteboard words that I recognized and thought, "Ah, yes, that word was invented in my original wiki."
Do you feel you should have a more prominent place in the books for your contribution?
It was transformative in the way of thinking about computing. Was this the product of my genius? No. I just stepped aside. I developed something that allowed those interested in creating what they needed to realize this new vision to communicate. The vision was already there. There was Christopher Alexander's inspiration and his work to change the way we build the world. There was the Smalltalk team at Xerox. And there was the fact that I had support for years in a research laboratory, with the freedom to explore these kinds of ideas. All of that came together at that moment.
If we look back at the early 'wikis', at the turn of the century, they were eminently open and collaborative. However, the openness and collaboration of that time have given way to pure business.
I am proud of the fact that we put these computers to work for the common good. Wikipedia appeared five years after our work, with a much broader focus than ours. We were programmers talking to other programmers. At first, I thought: we invented a new literature and they are just making an encyclopedia. So initially, I was a bit dismissive. But it turns out that many more people want to read encyclopedias than about computer programmers. They had a tremendous impact and, in general, have stayed true to the course we set. And probably, it is the individual piece of technology that has contributed the most to world peace ever invented. Now we have those who say "move fast and break things" - Mark Zuckerberg's motto for Facebook - who are in the US government saying we should stop donating money to Wikipedia because it doesn't cater to their needs [Elon Musk ordered his followers to boycott it and offered a billion dollars to change its name to "Dickipedia"]. It's ridiculous, but I understand that it has resulted in a significant increase in funding for Wikipedia.
What do you think of the expansion of the "free encyclopedia"?
I have to say that it bothers me that it is the only substantial example, in terms of openness and collaboration. I think OpenStreetMap is in the same vein, and there are other smaller projects, but in general, most of the experiences people have with computers are highly exploitative. And that doesn't benefit anyone. It's a shame, and it saddens me. That wasn't what we envisioned in those early days.
And how do you feel Wikipedia has improved what you developed?
It works in all languages. We, on the other hand, assumed that everyone would talk about programming in English. That was part of the chauvinism in the computer industry. It's something that Wikipedia did well and we didn't live up to.
Since you were talking about 'architecture' before, how have the foundations you laid shaped the future development of 'wikis'?
Thirty years ago, people asked me, "How do you make your site so fast?" And I would tell them that my Internet connection was an old 14.4 baud modem, the same one they used. So I was very aware of how much a byte cost. Every sentence was designed with that in mind. We were going to put the words, and those words were going to be important. We weren't going to fill everything with images or unnecessary elements. It was an intellectual space. If someone wrote something messy, with too many words, I would go back and edit it to make it fit. And people noticed. Those who had been there from the beginning and understood the true value of this, adopted it as well.
What happened then?
There was a lot of collective editing: if someone made a spelling mistake, someone else would correct it. But more importantly, if something was poorly organized, it self-organized, someone improved it. So there were people who believed that writing software was just following a series of steps when, in reality, it is a creative process. So we proclaimed: "Don't tell us what we should do. Tell us what you did and how it worked for you." That was the approach. It transformed the dialogue, created a kind of humanism. It was like a megaphone.
How has the system evolved?
The current work is very different. Before, there was inventiveness, a community of travelers in a new world. And that's not what Wikipedia is currently. So if you are a creative person, go and create something elsewhere, get a peer-reviewed publication, and maybe a student will translate it into simple language and explain it. But now what we do is create thousands of very small sites, tiny communities. Each person has their own wiki. So you can leave for a week, come back, and it's just as you left it. So no: people kept working while you were away, and when you returned, you found corrections and saw how everything fit together. A bit like the open-source style.