“My hope is that wiki becomes a totem for a way of interacting with people.”

— Ward Cunningham

Crucible of Creativity (2005)
Context: My hope is that wiki becomes a totem for a way of interacting with people. Tradition in the work world has been more top down, while wiki, standing for the Internet, is becoming a model for a new way of work. Largely driven by reduced communication costs, it changes what needs to be done and how it’s going to get done. I hope that the wiki nature, if not the wiki code, makes some contribution.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "My hope is that wiki becomes a totem for a way of interacting with people." by Ward Cunningham?

Ward Cunningham photo

Ward Cunningham 69

American computer programmer who developed the first wiki 1949

Related quotes

“Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along.”

Tim Berners-Lee (1955) British computer scientist, inventor of the World Wide Web

developerWorks Interviews: Tim Berners-Lee (podcast/audio plus transcript) http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/podcast/dwi/cm-int082206txt.html

“A wiki is a place to write in the same way that a party is a place to talk.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

Foreword to Wikis for Dummies
Context: Now, with wikis, you have a place to write. A wiki is a place to write in the same way that a party is a place to talk. There are thoughts all around you. Some are interesting, some less so. At a party or on a wiki, a word or two will be your trigger. Ideas start flowing. Talking or writing, you're among friends, the stage is set, you say your piece, it fits in, your words trigger the next thought: conversation.

“Global collaboration is something that Wiki mastered in a small way and here we can master it in a big way.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

Speaking about Eclipse Foundation
Podcast Interview with Ward Cunningham (2006)

“If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along.”

Tim Berners-Lee (1955) British computer scientist, inventor of the World Wide Web

developerWorks Interviews: Tim Berners-Lee (podcast/audio plus transcript) http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/podcast/dwi/cm-int082206txt.html
Context: Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along.

“Wiki has a feel of brainstorming, though it's not as interactive. You can do 10 minutes of brainstorming, and 30 minutes of analysis of the product of that brainstorming, and have something in 45 minutes. The pace on wiki is slower. You could write a page about an idea, or maybe a page about a bunch of ideas. Then you could come back in a week and see what's developed on that page.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Exploring with Wiki

“With wiki, you have to trust people more than you have any reason to trust them. In 1995, it was a safer environment, don’t know if I could have launched wiki today.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

Crucible of Creativity (2005)

“What you get as a wiki reader is access to people who had no voice before.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Exploring with Wiki

“But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole shrine he came,
And he told me in a vision of the night
There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And every single one of them is right!”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

In the Neolithic Age, Stanza 5 (1895).
The Seven Seas (1896)

“I hope people are reading my work in the future. I hope I have done more than frightened a couple of generations. I hope I’ve inspired a few people one way or another.”

Richard Matheson (1926–2013) American fiction writer

"Ed Gorman Calling: We Talk to Richard Matheson" http://www.mysteryfile.com/Matheson/Interview.html (2004)
Context: I hope people are reading my work in the future. I hope I have done more than frightened a couple of generations. I hope I’ve inspired a few people one way or another.
Actually, the highlight of my life — which, of course, had an enormous influence on my writing career — was meeting Ruth Woodson on the beach in Santa Monica in 1951, falling in love with her, marrying her, and creating with her a family of four children; two sons, two daughters. My love for them, and growth because of them, made my writing life what it was. It’s a process I advocate for any would-be writer.

“Too many people had spent too long demonizing or totemizing me to listen seriously to what I had to say.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

Address at Columbia University (1991)
Context: Too many people had spent too long demonizing or totemizing me to listen seriously to what I had to say. In the West, some "friends" turned against me, calling me by yet another set of insulting names. Now I was spineless, pathetic, debased; I had betrayed myself, my Cause; above all, I had betrayed them.
I also found myself up against the granite, heartless certainties of Actually Existing Islam, by which I mean the political and priestly power structure that presently dominates and stifles Muslim societies. Actually Existing Islam has failed to create a free society anywhere on Earth, and it wasn't about to let me, of all people, argue in favor of one.

Related topics