Essays on Free Knowledge cover art

Essays on Free Knowledge

The Origins of Wikipedia and the New Politics of Knowledge

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Essays on Free Knowledge

By: Larry Sanger
Narrated by: Larry Sanger
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £14.99

Buy Now for £14.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

For his long-awaited first book, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has revised some of his best essays on Wikipedia, intellectual autonomy, knowledge in the digital age, and how to fight back against the centralization of the Internet.

"A fundamental player in the history of the modern Internet." (Salon)

"A philosopher who explores the very nature and sources of knowledge." (Technology Review)

The digital revolution has been corrupted. What began as a celebration of freedom has become a machine for monitoring and control. What began as history’s greatest dream of enlightenment has been twisted into an anti-intellectual nightmare of indoctrination.

In 12 essays, several already well-known but newly revised in this volume, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger stakes out a hard-headed position in favor of the ideals of the digital revolution. At the same time he firmly rejects the disastrous naïveté that would have us abandon wisdom and autonomy, ignore subversion by bad actors, and blindly trust unaccountable, giant corporations.

Sanger concludes with a new essay on the problems facing the free internet, available only in this book.

The essays:

  • The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia: A Memoir
  • Two Early Articles about Wikipedia
  • Wikipedia’s Original Neutrality Policy
  • Why Neutrality?
  • Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism
  • How the Internet Is Changing What (We Think) We Know
  • Who Says We Know: On the New Politics of Knowledge
  • Individual Knowledge in the Internet Age
  • Is There a New Geek Anti-Intellectualism?
  • Introducing the Encyclosphere
  • Declaration of Digital Independence
  • The Future of the Free Internet
©2020 Lawrence M. Sanger (P)2021 Lawrence M. Sanger
Epistemology Philosophy

Listeners also enjoyed...

The Truth Matters cover art
The Math(s) Fix cover art
After the Fact? cover art
Why Privacy Matters cover art
A Place to Grow: The Culture of Sudbury Valley School cover art
Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed cover art
Infotopia cover art
Critical Thinking cover art
How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor cover art
Custom Reality and You cover art
The Curious Person's Guide to Fighting Fake News cover art
Technopoly cover art
Everybody Is Wrong About God cover art
Impromptu cover art
The Constitution of Knowledge cover art
Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy cover art
No reviews yet