Encyclopedia of the many Sharp Brains out there

A Leap for All Life: World’s Lead­ing Sci­en­tists Announce Cre­ation of Ency­clo­pe­dia of Life (a data­base of all liv­ing things)

Press Release: Bio­di­ver­si­ty, Sci­ence Com­mu­ni­ties Unite Behind Epic Effort To Pro­mote Bio­di­ver­si­ty, Doc­u­ment All 1.8 Mil­lion Named Species on Planet

• WASHINGTON (May 9, 2007) – Many of the world’s lead­ing sci­en­tif­ic insti­tu­tions today announced the launch of the Ency­clo­pe­dia of Life, an unprece­dent­ed glob­al effort to doc­u­ment all 1.8 mil­lion named species of ani­mals, plants, and oth­er forms of life on Earth. For the first time in the his­to­ry of the plan­et, sci­en­tists, stu­dents, and cit­i­zens will have mul­ti-media access to all known liv­ing species, even those that have just been discovered.
• Over the next 10 years, the Ency­clo­pe­dia of Life will cre­ate Inter­net pages for all 1.8 mil­lion species cur­rent­ly named. It will expe­dite the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the mil­lions of species yet to be dis­cov­ered and cat­a­logued as well. The pages, housed at http://www.eol.org/, will pro­vide writ­ten infor­ma­tion and, when avail­able, pho­tographs, video, sound, loca­tion maps, and oth­er mul­ti­me­dia infor­ma­tion on each species. Built on the sci­en­tif­ic integri­ty of thou­sands of experts around the globe, the Ency­clo­pe­dia will be a mod­er­at­ed wiki-style envi­ron­ment, freely avail­able to all users everywhere.
• Sci­en­tists began cre­at­ing indi­vid­ual web pages for species in the 1990s. How­ev­er, Inter­net tech­nol­o­gy need­ed to mature to allow fast and effi­cient cre­ation of a com­pre­hen­sive Ency­clo­pe­dia. While spe­cif­ic Ency­clo­pe­dia of Life efforts, includ­ing the scan­ning of key research pub­li­ca­tions and data, have been under­way since Jan­u­ary 2006, work has accel­er­at­ed due to the sup­port pro­vid­ed by the John D. and Cather­ine T. MacArthur Foun­da­tion and the recent dis­cus­sion of the Ency­clo­pe­dia of Life by renowned biol­o­gist Edward O. Wil­son at the March 2007 Tech­nol­o­gy, Enter­tain­ment, Design (TED) Conference.
• One of the world’s fore­most sci­en­tists and envi­ron­men­tal­ists, Wil­son, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, “wished” for the estab­lish­ment of the Ency­clo­pe­dia of Life dur­ing his TED Con­fer­ence address. Not­ing that “our knowl­edge of bio­di­ver­si­ty is so incom­plete that we are at risk of los­ing a great deal of it before it is ever dis­cov­ered,” Wil­son called for a con­tem­po­rary, dynam­ic por­trait of the liv­ing Earth.
• “I wish that we will work togeth­er to help cre­ate the key tool that we need to inspire preser­va­tion of Earth’s bio­di­ver­si­ty: the Ency­clo­pe­dia of Life,” Wil­son said at TED. “What excites me is that since I first put for­ward this idea, sci­ence has advanced, tech­nol­o­gy has moved for­ward. Today, the prac­ti­cal­i­ties of mak­ing this ency­clo­pe­dia real are with­in reach as nev­er before.”

See E.O. Wilson’s talk at TED.

If you are inter­est­ed in the biol­o­gy of learn­ing, you will enjoy our inter­view with Dr. James Zull, Pro­fes­sor of Biol­o­gy and Bio­chem­istry at Case West­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, and author of The Art of Chang­ing the Brain: An ape can do this. Can we not?.