Wikipedia will be Printed and Sold for $500,000
Looks like someone will actually do the thing everybody has been joking about. Michael Mandiberg, one of the chief Wikipedia contributors, decided that printing out the largest database of human knowledge would actually be awesome. And that is literary one of the main reasons. "When I started, I wondered: 'What if I took this new thing and made it into that old thing," said Mr. Mandiberg.
The compressed version of the web encyclopedia (its size is around 11 GB) will be uploaded to Lulu.com, a website that allows to print and publish books on demand. The process of upload is said to take about two weeks and after that anyone who has a spare $500,000 will be able to buy 7,600 volumes of the free encyclopedia which will never be updated. Naturally, you can buy volumes separately for $80 per book. Each volume will consist of 700 pages, and the total size of the Printed Wikipedia will be 5,244,111. Want more figures? The contents section will take 91 volumes, and 36 volumes will be given to the extensive list of Wikipedia contributors
The project is supported directly by the Wikimedia Foundation and will be presented at an exhibition in Denny Gallery, New York, where the upload process will start. Though the idea might seem a bit strange, to say the least, do not forget that wiki is a free and open-source platform that requires donations to foster. Thus, such 'poetic' promotion may give it the resources (both monetary and human) that are extremely valuable for further development of the project.
VIA: VentureBeat
