A Message from the Foundation President

Dear Guest and Potential Contributor to the Digital Universe,

In episode twelve of Carl Sagan's Cosmos series, the visionary astronomer borrows an idea from the writings of Isaac Asimov and proposes that someday there may exist an Encyclopedia Galactica: a compendium of knowledge based on the cumulative achievements of a galaxy-spanning civilization with thousands of years of history.

Amazingly, a quarter century later the tools to initiate that are available in the World Wide Web. A global collaboration aiming to organize and make available, eventually, the sum total of human knowledge can begin today. The technology is now available to start such an open-ended, generation-spanning project. All that is needed is a plan and a catalyst to set the gears in motion.

That is the role of the Digital Universe.

Via an organized collaboration between experts and the public we are taking the first steps toward a repository of information and knowledge that must have five essential characteristics. It must be complete, accurate, accessible, interactive and high quality. That is possible to do. But it can be even more than that. Using rich media and interactive capabilities, a variety of different types of information, experiences and activities can be associated with every topic. This greatly expands the concept of an encyclopedia beyond the written word.

The Digital Universe is being organized around Portals (e.g. the Earth Portal, the Energy Portal) and subportals into a taxonomy of reality. The portals are interlinked in a visual navigation system that shows their relationships. This adds a capability on top of access to topic-specific information: exploration and discovery via browsing of related portals. In the "old days" of the 20th century you had to venture into the musty but well-organized stacks to find just what you needed, which ended up being two shelves down from where the card catalog sent you. In the Digital Universe, the lucky coincidence is just a mouse click away, one or two thumbnails apart in the visual taxonomy.

In comparison to where it is designed to evolve, The Digital Universe today is a frontier populated by early-arrival web pioneers with grand visions and lots of energy. But as the Wikipedia experiment has shown, the growth of a frontier can quickly become exponential. I am pleased and excited to be working with the co-founder of the Wikipedia, Dr. Larry Sanger, and a team of experts on this even more ambitious project to bring Carl and Isaac's vision from fiction to reality.

Come build the Digital Universe.

Bernard Haisch
President, Digital Universe Foundation