Prof. E.O. Wilson talks about ways to disseminate high-quality knowledge online.

I have built out of a lifetime of studying biological diversity, I focused on ants of which there are 14,000 species today known and far more that’s out there to be found.

And I did a lot of other biological work. But my focus was on always on biological diversity. And it was my desire to see that field modernized, you know, modern taxonomy and a biogeography in this old discipline modernized that maybe grabbed hold of what I saw as great potential of the net, although, I have to admit, I’m pretty much of an ignoramus in the field.

Nonetheless, I saw what it could do and I saw an endless sea of nerds and experts, the extraordinarily successful technological and scientific people emerging, and I said, why can’t they take us up with them and that basically what has happened in the last 10 years.

Recorded on: December 4, 2008