Digital Universe
Encyclopedia
Digital Universe is a free online information service founded in 2006. The project aims to create a "network of portals designed to provide high-quality information and services to the public". Subject matter experts are to be responsible for reviewing and approving content; contributors are to be both experts (researchers, scholars, educators) and the public.
The project was founded in 2005 by Joe Firmage
, CEO of ManyOne
, with Bernard Haisch
as the president. It launched in early 2006. Larry Sanger
was a director, and helped with the launch of the project's Encyclopedia of Earth
. Sanger left in late 2006 to launch Citizendium
.
of the Web."
While the public will be invited to contribute to some articles in the Digital Universe encyclopedia, they will be supervised by "stewards" whose role is to guarantee quality and accuracy of the articles. In addition, parts of the Digital Universe will be editable only by credentialed experts.
The public wiki, will be editable by members of the educated public. However, according to Sanger, only registered users who have provided their real names will be permitted to edit this wiki, unlike Wikipedia. According to Sanger, an article rating system will be used for articles in the public wiki.
Some of the 3-D graphical interface features will require the use of a Mozilla
-based browser developed by ManyOne Networks
, which they say will be made available free of charge.
Some content will be available only to ManyOne subscribers.
. The Salton Sea portal for example contains the following pages: Hydrology, Biology, Limnology, Ecological Issues, Values, Geography, Alternatives, and Cultural History.
The Earth portal is working on an Encyclopedia of Earth
(EoE), which will focus on the natural environment
and its interaction with society. It will differ from Wikipedia by limiting editing privileges to experts, by attributing all edits to their authors, by changes being published publicly only after approval and by using an expert-developed taxonomy for articles.
EoE will use two parallel wikis, one "Stewarded", one "Public". The Stewarded wiki will be open only to "recognized scientific authorities" after their credentials have been reviewed. Like Wikipedia
, the EoE runs Mediawiki
wiki software. EoE is to use the Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 for its license. Over 400 articles had been written by experts by January 2006.
In May 2006 it was reported that the EoE was due to be launched in June 2006. A July 2006 article reported that the launch would be in fall 2006.
, the EoE's International Advisory Board included Robert Costanza
, Thomas Homer-Dixon
, Rajendra K. Pachauri
and Frank Sherwood Rowland
.
, USWeb
founder; astrophysicist Bernard Haisch
, president of the Digital Universe Foundation, and Larry Sanger
. On 14 March 2006, the Digital Universe Foundation announced that Lawrence Lessig
, Founder and Chairman of the Creative Commons
Project, had joined the Digital Universe advisory board.
In September 2006, Sanger announced that he had taken a "leave of absence" from Digital Universe "in order to set up a fully independent Citizendium
Foundation".
reported that "Digital Universe, a non-profit based in Scotts Valley, is part of a complicated three-organization structure. ManyOne Networks is the for-profit arm of the operation, backed with angel investor
s and private investor funding that is developing the Digital Universe software. Its profits are funneled to the ManyOne Foundation, set up in Canada for tax purposes and to give the project a less U.S.-centric feel. Eventually, the foundation will acquire ManyOne Networks by buying out the investors at a fixed rate of return, Haisch said. The Digital Universe Foundation controls the content that is published online. It will issue grants to academics and researchers to produce work for the Web site. The plan is to create a self-sustainable organization through a mix of grants and revenue from premium services, such as high-resolution images and video and e-mail, with prices ranging from $7.95 to $49.95."
As of January 2006, US$10.5 million had been raised from investors and foundations for the Digital Universe project. ManyOne Networks plans to offer premium services for $7.95 a month and to sell Internet access. These revenues will be used in part to support the Digital Universe project. Firmage has stated that access to the basic Digital Universe content will always remain free and without advertisements.
The stewardship program and other Digital Universe activities are the responsibility of the non-profit Digital Universe Foundation, headquartered in Scotts Valley, California
.
The project was founded in 2005 by Joe Firmage
Joe Firmage
Joseph Firmage is an American Internet entrepreneur. He founded several business ventures prior to and during the dot-com boom and currently is involved with two closely linked organizations: ManyOne Networks, of which he is CEO, and the Digital Universe Foundation, of which he is a co-founder and...
, CEO of ManyOne
ManyOne
ManyOne Networks was an Internet services company headquartered in Los Gatos, California that declared Chapter 7 Bankruptcy on October 12, 2009. With technology purchased from the original company, a new ManyOne began operations on Sept. 13, 2011...
, with Bernard Haisch
Bernard Haisch
Bernard Haisch is a German-born American astrophysicist who has done research in solar-stellar astrophysics and stochastic electrodynamics. He has developed with Alfonso Rueda a speculative theory that the non-zero lowest energy state of the vacuum, as predicted by quantum mechanics, might provide...
as the president. It launched in early 2006. Larry Sanger
Larry Sanger
Lawrence Mark "Larry" Sanger is an American philosopher, co-founder of Wikipedia, and the founder of Citizendium....
was a director, and helped with the launch of the project's Encyclopedia of Earth
Encyclopedia of Earth
The Encyclopedia of Earth is an electronic reference about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society. The Encyclopedia is described as a free, fully searchable collection of articles written by scholars, professionals, educators, and other approved experts, who...
. Sanger left in late 2006 to launch Citizendium
Citizendium
Citizendium is an English-language wiki-based free encyclopedia project launched by Larry Sanger, who co-founded Wikipedia in 2001....
.
Goals
In December 2005, when the project was announced, the founders' goal was to create a worldwide network of researchers, scholars, and educators, to become "the PBSPublic Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
of the Web."
While the public will be invited to contribute to some articles in the Digital Universe encyclopedia, they will be supervised by "stewards" whose role is to guarantee quality and accuracy of the articles. In addition, parts of the Digital Universe will be editable only by credentialed experts.
Multi-tiered system
The expert wiki, is expected to be written and managed by experts.The public wiki, will be editable by members of the educated public. However, according to Sanger, only registered users who have provided their real names will be permitted to edit this wiki, unlike Wikipedia. According to Sanger, an article rating system will be used for articles in the public wiki.
Some of the 3-D graphical interface features will require the use of a Mozilla
Mozilla
Mozilla is a term used in a number of ways in relation to the Mozilla.org project and the Mozilla Foundation, their defunct commercial predecessor Netscape Communications Corporation, and their related application software....
-based browser developed by ManyOne Networks
ManyOne
ManyOne Networks was an Internet services company headquartered in Los Gatos, California that declared Chapter 7 Bankruptcy on October 12, 2009. With technology purchased from the original company, a new ManyOne began operations on Sept. 13, 2011...
, which they say will be made available free of charge.
Some content will be available only to ManyOne subscribers.
Content
Around 2000 content pages existed as of August 2007. The Digital Universe claims the following featured portals: Earth, Energy, The Arctic, Texas Environment, U.S. Government, and Salton SeaSalton Sea
The Salton Sea is a shallow, saline, endorheic rift lake located directly on the San Andreas Fault, predominantly in California's Imperial Valley. The lake occupies the lowest elevations of the Salton Sink in the Colorado Desert of Imperial and Riverside counties in Southern California. Like Death...
. The Salton Sea portal for example contains the following pages: Hydrology, Biology, Limnology, Ecological Issues, Values, Geography, Alternatives, and Cultural History.
The Earth portal is working on an Encyclopedia of Earth
Encyclopedia of Earth
The Encyclopedia of Earth is an electronic reference about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society. The Encyclopedia is described as a free, fully searchable collection of articles written by scholars, professionals, educators, and other approved experts, who...
(EoE), which will focus on the natural environment
Natural environment
The natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof. It is an environment that encompasses the interaction of all living species....
and its interaction with society. It will differ from Wikipedia by limiting editing privileges to experts, by attributing all edits to their authors, by changes being published publicly only after approval and by using an expert-developed taxonomy for articles.
EoE will use two parallel wikis, one "Stewarded", one "Public". The Stewarded wiki will be open only to "recognized scientific authorities" after their credentials have been reviewed. Like Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
, the EoE runs Mediawiki
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...
wiki software. EoE is to use the Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 for its license. Over 400 articles had been written by experts by January 2006.
In May 2006 it was reported that the EoE was due to be launched in June 2006. A July 2006 article reported that the launch would be in fall 2006.
, the EoE's International Advisory Board included Robert Costanza
Robert Costanza
Robert Costanza is an American ecological economist is a University Professor of Sustainability at Portland State University in Oregon.- Biography :Robert Costanza was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania....
, Thomas Homer-Dixon
Thomas Homer-Dixon
Thomas Homer-Dixon holds the Centre for International Governance Innovation Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ontario, and is a Professor in the Centre for Environment and Business in the Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo...
, Rajendra K. Pachauri
Rajendra K. Pachauri
Rajendra Kumar Pachauri has served as the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 2002, during which his tenure has engendered controversy. He is also been director general of TERI, a research and policy organization in India, and chancellor of TERI University...
and Frank Sherwood Rowland
Frank Sherwood Rowland
Frank Sherwood Rowland is an American Nobel laureate and a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. His research is in atmospheric chemistry and chemical kinetics....
.
Development
Principals of the Digital Universe project include Joe FirmageJoe Firmage
Joseph Firmage is an American Internet entrepreneur. He founded several business ventures prior to and during the dot-com boom and currently is involved with two closely linked organizations: ManyOne Networks, of which he is CEO, and the Digital Universe Foundation, of which he is a co-founder and...
, USWeb
USWeb
USWeb is currently an Internet marketing company going by the same name as the original USWeb of the 1990s. The original USWeb was founded as a web design and site engineering company which expanded during the dot-com boom into online strategy consulting and online marketing...
founder; astrophysicist Bernard Haisch
Bernard Haisch
Bernard Haisch is a German-born American astrophysicist who has done research in solar-stellar astrophysics and stochastic electrodynamics. He has developed with Alfonso Rueda a speculative theory that the non-zero lowest energy state of the vacuum, as predicted by quantum mechanics, might provide...
, president of the Digital Universe Foundation, and Larry Sanger
Larry Sanger
Lawrence Mark "Larry" Sanger is an American philosopher, co-founder of Wikipedia, and the founder of Citizendium....
. On 14 March 2006, the Digital Universe Foundation announced that Lawrence Lessig
Lawrence Lessig
Lawrence "Larry" Lessig is an American academic and political activist. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications, and he has called for state-based activism to promote substantive...
, Founder and Chairman of the Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
Project, had joined the Digital Universe advisory board.
In September 2006, Sanger announced that he had taken a "leave of absence" from Digital Universe "in order to set up a fully independent Citizendium
Citizendium
Citizendium is an English-language wiki-based free encyclopedia project launched by Larry Sanger, who co-founded Wikipedia in 2001....
Foundation".
Funding
In July 2006, the San Jose Mercury NewsSan Jose Mercury News
The San Jose Mercury News is a daily newspaper in San Jose, California. On its web site, however, it calls itself Silicon Valley Mercury News. The paper is owned by MediaNews Group...
reported that "Digital Universe, a non-profit based in Scotts Valley, is part of a complicated three-organization structure. ManyOne Networks is the for-profit arm of the operation, backed with angel investor
Angel investor
An angel investor or angel is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity...
s and private investor funding that is developing the Digital Universe software. Its profits are funneled to the ManyOne Foundation, set up in Canada for tax purposes and to give the project a less U.S.-centric feel. Eventually, the foundation will acquire ManyOne Networks by buying out the investors at a fixed rate of return, Haisch said. The Digital Universe Foundation controls the content that is published online. It will issue grants to academics and researchers to produce work for the Web site. The plan is to create a self-sustainable organization through a mix of grants and revenue from premium services, such as high-resolution images and video and e-mail, with prices ranging from $7.95 to $49.95."
As of January 2006, US$10.5 million had been raised from investors and foundations for the Digital Universe project. ManyOne Networks plans to offer premium services for $7.95 a month and to sell Internet access. These revenues will be used in part to support the Digital Universe project. Firmage has stated that access to the basic Digital Universe content will always remain free and without advertisements.
The stewardship program and other Digital Universe activities are the responsibility of the non-profit Digital Universe Foundation, headquartered in Scotts Valley, California
Scotts Valley, California
Scotts Valley is a small city in Santa Cruz County, California, United States, about thirty miles south of downtown San Jose and six miles north of Monterey Bay, in the upland slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 11,580...
.