Isn't that What the Internet Is?

Fascinating headline, slightly less fascinating story, though it still will probably be pretty neat:

BBC, Geldof to catalogue all human existence

Irish rocker and Live Aid founder Bob Geldof is to team up with the British Broadcasting Corporation on a project to digitally catalogue all known human existence.... 

The London-based public service broadcaster, its commercial arm BBC Worldwide and Geldof's Ten Alps media group are to collaborate on the "Dictionary of Man".

In a statement, the BBC said the scale and ambition of the anthropological project, which will have an accompanying television series "The Human Planet", was "unprecedented".

It would use every available medium to create the "largest ever living record" of films, photographs, anthropological histories, philosophies, theologies, economies, language, art as well as people's personal stories.

Comments

joe | April 17, 2007, 3:33pm | #

Sort of like the internet, except you have to pay for it.

Eric S. | April 17, 2007, 3:38pm | #

If Geldof is going to lead the Foundation, then who is leading the Second Foundation? Al Gore?

joe | April 17, 2007, 3:47pm | #

Why don't they just put up a link to wikipedia and save the money?

Dave | April 17, 2007, 3:50pm | #

Sounds interesting, but there's a point where something like this can get just so huge that their "compiled" information has little difference from the "non-compiled" world around us. In other words, if the ir project ends up being a whole library, why not just go to the library (or, as has been pointed out, the internet). Very curious to see what sort of format this will take.

highnumber | April 17, 2007, 3:54pm | #

Google is already on this.

(Preview function indicates possible problem with above link. If necessary, please cut paste:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/40076 )

joe | April 17, 2007, 3:57pm | #

Hey, second joe, could you maybe capitalize or something?

Kap | April 17, 2007, 3:58pm | #

Mostly harmless.

ed | April 17, 2007, 4:21pm | #

I have an idea: when they finish this thing, let's send it into outer space!

Stoner | April 17, 2007, 4:43pm | #

Uhhh...and then they'll call it Wikipedia. Then send it in to space.

Matt | April 17, 2007, 4:49pm | #

The Singularity is a Boomtown Rat.

Steven Wright | April 17, 2007, 4:51pm | #

I had a map once that was in scale 1:1

It was a bitch to fold.

Max | April 17, 2007, 5:31pm | #

You can create the world's greatest digital library, but if nobody can access it (due to copyright law), what good is it?

What's needed is compulsary licensing for books and other media. You would give up a little pricing flexibility, but gain tremendously by eliminating the friction of transaction costs.

Mike Laursen | April 17, 2007, 5:49pm | #

I'm still waiting for Project Xanadu to ship. Should be any day now...

http://xanadu.com/

juris imprudent | April 17, 2007, 6:56pm | #

Or they could use the condensed version...


42

Randolph Carter | April 17, 2007, 8:47pm | #

Bob Geldorf has obviously forgotten that the menu is not food

Syd | April 18, 2007, 2:04am | #

Actually, it sounds pretty cool, if totally indigestible. Wikipedia has a policy against original research, so this would complement it to some degree. It also sounds much larger than Wikipedia, which I could fit on one partition of my hard drive.

Jim Walsh | April 18, 2007, 4:03am | #

Anything to keep him busy so he doesn't produce any more We Are The World albums...

Andrew Ian Dodge | April 18, 2007, 5:26am | #

With the BBC behind it the biases will be easy to spot. Still it is amazing to see the one-hit wonder that is Bob Geldof continue his level of notoriety.

Monster Cable | April 18, 2007, 8:05am | #

Man, this guy has ambition. He makes his name as part of a grade-C British pop outfit producing a kinda-memorable early 80's song, and ends up trying to end world hunger and catalog all human knowledge. What's next? - 'Bob Geldof Defeats Death'?

R H | April 18, 2007, 8:38am | #

A kinda-topical early 80s song right now

Brian Sorgatz | April 18, 2007, 1:01pm | #

The London-based public service broadcaster, its commercial arm BBC Worldwide and Geldof's Ten Alps media group are to collaborate on the "Dictionary of Man".

Just you wait: at the last moment, the real name of the project will be announced as To Serve Man.

Dee-dee-dee-dee, dee-dee-dee-dee (spoiler alert).