Jimmy Wales’ Mac and the First Wikipedia Edit — “Hello World”

We dropped in Christie’s and noticed the iMac and NFT of the first Wikipedia edit are on the auction block.

From the NFT listing: “Jimmy Wales launched Wikipedia on 15 January 2001 by installing an early version of Ward Cunningham’s wiki software on a server. Following that installation, he typed in the first line of custom text to appear on the site: “Hello, World!” This NFT embodies Wales’s first edit and a recreation of Wikipedia as it appeared in its first moments of existence, based on code within the earliest extant backup of the site. The appearance of the site as it was in early 2001 evokes nostalgia for many, but it also reminds us of how far we have come from the “wild west” days. Indeed early wikis existed almost as performance art projects. Because they tended to keep no (or little) history of revisions, they were deliberately and purposefully vulnerable. The original Usemod wiki software that Wales installed in 2001 was so open that it didn’t even use passwords for logins and edits—anyone could log in under any name at any time.”

From the Christie’s Mac listing: “The ethos was very much the embodiment of the open-source movement of the time, and signaled a new era in the history of the internet: the rise of a collaborative movement that would transform the landscape of the digital world.

At the time of writing, the size of Wikipedia has mushroomed: over 57 million articles in over 300 languages, overseen by nearly many thousands of volunteer editors who collectively have been responsible for over 3 billion edits. If the whole of Wikipedia were to appear in print, it is estimated it would require about 21,500 volumes. Wikipedia is, in its own words as ‘the largest and most-read reference work in history.’”