ABSTRACT

I n the mid-1700s, two philosophers of the French Enlightenment began one of the most audacious schemes in the history of publishing. Diderot and D’Alembert planned to write an encyclopedia that would collect all human knowledge into a series of massive tomes (see Figure 2.1). The resulting lavishly illustrated volumes fell far short of this goal. Today, however, the Enlightenment dream embodied in Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopedia is alive and well, particularly on the Internet, where attempts to collect massive quantities of information have reached a level unimaginable even a decade ago. Still, regardless of technological advances, the Internet is likely to fail, just as the two French philosophers failed 250 years ago.