@dredmorbius On the subject of "versioned documents" (as in, Wiki or source-control type systems that publish all previous editions of a document or a set of files, annotated with discussion)
1. I'm still not sure that this is a completely new thing in history. Religious and legal communities (in ancient times, the same groups) have had extensive traditions of "texts, anf commentaries on the texts" for millennia. Eg Judaism's Midrash https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midrash
@natecull How many such works? How many communities? How many authors? With what update frequency? What degree of access?
The total number of /books/ (not individual titles) in Europe as of 1800 was < 1 billion (~970 or so). Call it, at 5 MB per book, 5 petabytes.
All of Wikipedia is 6 TB. So 1,000 copies of Wikipedia would exceed /all printed knowledge in Europe as of 1800/.
And that's updatable. By pretty much anyone, anywhere, at any time.
@natecull There were serial and annual publications. There's a Library of Congress classification for these: yearbooks. Which gives you a sense of the update frequency.
What evidence would change your mind on this?
Nate Cull (.social)
Dr. Edward Morbius ❌