This last week Jimmy Wales spoke at Calvin College’s January series. Even though I was not able to make it the campus to see him speak, I did watch it live from the Ladies Literary Club in downtown Grand Rapids.
Wales is the founder of Wikipedia and he talked for a while about it’s growth around the world. Even though Wikipedia is widely used in the United States it is growing faster is several other countries like Germany, and Iraq.
He spent a majority of his time discussing the current struggles of censorship in China. His talk was even more poignant considering Google's struggle with China. Wales discussed his negotiations he had with China regarding Wikipedia. He told them he would not censor the articles and that they would have to censor them.
It is a blessing to be able to speak freely online and in our congregations without fear of repercussions or censorship. I hope that one day this will be uniform in every country.
It was an interesting talk that not only shed light on the current development of Wikipedia but about the climate of democracy on the internet around the world.
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