Knowing What We Know

Knowing What We KnowCondition: BRAND NEW ISBN: 9780008484422 Year: 2024 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Description: A delightful compendium of the kind of facts you immediately want to share with anyone you encounter New York Times An ebullient, irrepressible spirit invests this book. It is erudite and sprightlySunday Times From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classeshere is award winning writer Simon

‘A delightful compendium of the kind of facts you immediately want to share with anyone you encounter’ New York Times

‘An ebullient, irrepressible spirit invests this book. It is erudite and sprightly’Sunday Times

From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes—here is award-winning writer Simon Winchester’s brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds.

With the advent of the internet, any topic we want to know about is instantly available with the touch of a smartphone button. With so much knowledge at our fingertips, what is there left for our brains to do? At a time when we seem to be stripping all value from the idea of knowing things – no need for maths, no need for map reading, no need for memorisation – are we risking our ability to think? As we empty our minds, will we one day be incapable of thoughtfulness?

Addressing these questions, Simon Winchester explores how humans have attained, stored and disseminated knowledge. Examining such disciplines as education, journalism, encyclopedia creation, museum curation, photography and broadcasting, he looks at a whole range of knowledge diffusion – from the cuneiform writings of Babylon to the machine-made genius of artificial intelligence, by way of Gutenberg, Google and Wikipedia to the huge Victorian assemblage of the Mundaneum, the collection of everything ever known, currently stored in a damp basement in northern Belgiu