“Focusing on universal access to all knowledge has been a great career choice”

Gistermiddag las ik een interview met Brewster Kahle op de website On The Commons. Op de vraag wat hem ertoe bracht technologie en algemene beschikbaarheid van kennis samen te brengen antwoordt hij:

A friend once said to me, Brewster, you’re an idealist. I replied, Yes. Then he said, And you’re a technologist. My reply was the same. Finally he challenged me to describe how I could use technology to make things better, which was not an easy question to answer. I came up with two ideas: enhanced privacy and building the great library. It quickly became clear, however, that it would be too difficult to create affordable privacy solutions for the commons with the technology available at the time. So I turned to the digital library, an idea I’ve been working on ever since.

And focusing on universal access to all knowledge has been a great career choice. By picking a goal that I can never achieve, not only do I have something to work on forever, but other people can also participate. The true beauty of it is that we’re all working toward the same thing, yet we don’t have to work for one another. Competing organizations can even agree.

Prachtig toch? De rest van het interview barst van de andere inspirerende uitspraken, dus een absolute aanrader. Lees het hier.

Afbeelding: Joi Ito [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons