TechPost #2: An Historical Framework

Word Document: http://www.sfu.ca/~ata48/TECH%20114/TechPost2.doc

The Technological Development of Wikis Through History

A Wiki is a collection of web pages that are designed to allow anyone to have the ability to contribute or modify its content. Wikis did not exist up until the mid-1990s since they require the use of a computer and the Internet, which also did not exist until the late 20th century. Though since its creation, Wikis have developed and continue to do so with the rapid growth of the Internet.

A Wiki is an article of information that can be edited by anyone at anytime. A Wiki can be accessed through the Internet, which can be anywhere in the world. This obviously would not be possible during the industrial era due to the lack of the appropriate technology that a Wiki utilizes. In the 18th and 19th centuries, documents that served the same purpose of a Wiki were usually physical documents that had only one author and could not be edited by anyone. The sharing of information was also difficult during this period since communication was limited to in-person means and by mail. In addition, education during this time was limited to certain classes which meant that illiteracy rates among society were high (“Education in Britain during the 18th century”, n.d.).

Before the first Wiki was ever created, there existed a few early forms of technology that resembled the attributes of a Wiki. One of these examples is Vannevar Bush’s Memex that was created in 1945, which is “a device in which an individual stores his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility” (Landow, 1992). In other words, this device would effectively create automated links between documents, which is an essential trait of a Wiki as we know it today. Another example was the ZOG database system for a multi-user environment. This was one of the earliest forms of a Wiki that used a computer. It was created in 1972 by researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University which consisted of text-only frames which in themselves, consisted of titles, descriptions, a line with ZOG commands, and sets of selections that lead to other frames (Cunningham & Cunningham, 2008). Neither of these technologies had a major influence on society, but they did help take part in the creation of the Wiki.

The first Wiki was born with the continued expansion of the Internet. “WikiWikiWeb” was developed in 1994 by Ward Cunningham and was designed to simplify the exchange of ideas between programmers by allowing its pages to be quickly editable by its users (“WikiWikiWeb”, 2009). Soon after, the first clones of WikiWikiWeb were born, one being CvWiki which developed by Peter Merel in 1997. It was the first clone to have functioning transclusion and back links, and also integrated Concurrent Version System software that provided unlimited undo and no edit abilities. Since the first Wikis were designed to be used by computer programmers, they were virtually unknown outside of this group. It was then that Wikipedia, created in 2001, introduced Wikis to the general public and provided a free content encyclopaedia that can be edited by anyone. In its first year, over 20,000 encyclopaedia entries were created (“History of wikis”, 2009). Since then, the number of users and articles has grown exponentially. As of today, Wikipedia includes several million articles and pages in hundreds of languages, with content from millions of contributors.

It is clear that Wikis have become some of the most popular websites, after initially being created for small groups of computer programmers, it has become available and used by hundreds of millions of users and editors today. With the continued growth of the Internet, the amount of information available continues to grow as well, and because of this, encyclopaedias, dictionaries, and other reference books are expected to be replaced by the Internet. Though since Wikis can be freely edited by anyone, many object to the use of Wikis since they can potentially contain inaccurate information, and so they question the reliability of Wikis as a source of information; while others simply accept the potential inaccuracies as fact. One thing is for sure, Wikis can be an easy way to quickly look up information that may not necessarily be used for academic purposes. Also, outside of the context of Wikis being used as an encyclopaedia, they can be very useful for a team of people working on a project, for example, exactly what the first Wiki was created for; to simplify the exchange of ideas between computer programmers. One can only imagine how much more Wikis will continue to develop.

Reference List

Cunningham & Cunningham. (2008, June). Wiki Wiki origin. Retrieved March 17, 2009, from http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki?WikiWikiOrigin

Education in Britain during the 18th century. (n.d.). Retrieved March 17, 2009, from http://english3204.ash.com

History of wikis. (2009). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia. Retrieved March 17, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wikis

Landow, G. (1992). Vannevar Bush and the memex. Retrieved March 17, 2009, from Cyberarts and Cyberculture Research Initiative site: http://www.cyberartsweb.org/cpace/ht/jhup/memex.html

WikiWikiWeb. (2009). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia. Retrieved March 17, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiWikiWeb