Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic – Winchester Simon (2024)

From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, award-winning writer Simon Winchester offers a brilliant and wide-ranging look at how humans acquire, retain and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and minds. With any subject now instantly available at the touch of a smartphone button, he asks what remains for our brains to do. Are we risking our ability to think as we discard mathematics, map reading and memorisation? Could emptying our minds eventually make us incapable of thoughtfulness? Winchester examines how humans have attained, stored and disseminated knowledge through education, journalism, encyclopedia creation, museum curation, photography and broadcasting. His journey extends from the cuneiform writings of Babylon and ancient museums to Gutenberg, Google, Wikipedia, artificial intelligence and the Mundaneum, the vast Victorian collection of everything ever known, now housed in a damp basement in northern Belgium. Filled with strange and fascinating details, this deep dive into learning and the human mind asks what rational humans are becoming. What is the value of knowledge if it leads to a lack of thought, and what is information without wisdom? Does René Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” still hold? And what will the world be like if no one in it is wise?