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The birth of Wikipedia: Strawberry iMac computer and Jimmy Wales NFT up for auction

The online sale entitled The Birth of Wikipedia takes place from December 3 to 15 and consists of two lots: a Strawberry iMac used at the time by Wales and an NFT of the first edit of Wikipedia

The birth of Wikipedia: Strawberry iMac computer and Jimmy Wales NFT up for auction

Christie's is auctioning off two items relating to the history of Wikipedia directly from Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of the non-profit online encyclopedia.

A portion of the proceeds from the sale will help support Wales' alternative social media network WT.Social pilot project, an attempt to find a healthier, non-toxic alternative to existing social media platforms with an ad-free, donation-only model as well as to help support a variety of charities working in the world of free culture.

The Strawberry iMac was Wales' personal computer, which he used for development and research at the time of the website's launch on 15 January 2001, monitoring the initial development of the site, protecting it from vandals and marveling at its rapid growth. When the computer became obsolete, it was relegated to his young daughter's room, who used it to play video games. It was later placed in its original box, which will be included in the sale. Christie's will also offer an NFT of the first edit to Wikipedia: “Hello, World!” Made by Wales on the day Wikipedia was launched, it would be the first in a long line of changes that would produce “the largest and most widely read reference work in history”. (Wikipedia) and NFT preserve the layout of the Wikipedia homepage in 2001, based on the earliest existing source code. The NFT also has a dynamic feature, which allows the owner to change the page, which can be reset with a timer to return to its original state. “More than twenty years have passed since I first typed the words” Hello, World! ” to launch Wikipedia – and to this day I am still amazed at the scale and breadth of what it has become,” remarked Jimmy Wales.

In early 2000, Wales and his partners had spearheaded an ambitious project: They were going to develop a free, online, user-sourced encyclopedia called Nupedia. But by the end of the year, the project languished with barely a handful of papers completed. Wales was contemplating dropping the whole venture, but on Boxing Day, a highly personal event changed everything: “… my first daughter Kira was born, but with a serious medical condition - she was immediately rushed to intensive care and eventually I ended up at home frantically researching (as any new parent would) about the condition, trying to find out more. I sat up to this computer and started my research. And of course then, the result was a disaster. There was no direct, concise, reliable source of information to explain something like this to me. I decided to double my efforts rather than give up: I could see and emotionally feel the importance of quality information. After she got out of the hospital, I installed a primitive package of “wiki software" and on January 15, 2001, Wikipedia was launched.

A Strawberry iMac Apple Computer Inc., 2000

The Strawberry iMac it also recalls Apple's reemergence as a major player in the computing world after experiencing the corporate equivalent of a near-death experience in the mid-90s. When Jimmy Wales was starting Wikipedia, Apple was preparing to release its Mac OS X operating system. Today Apple and Wikipedia, while very different in almost every respect, both dominate their respective fields and are household names around the world. This Strawberry iMac, like most electronic devices, quickly became obsolete (although in the meantime it has had a second life as her daughter's computer for playing "Blues Clues" and the like). It went into storage and is now being offered along with its original box (as expected in 2000). Wales also used a computer in the offices of Bomis, the company that initially oversaw and funded the Wikipedia project. That unit has long been lost.

Description: This NFT Token ID: Non-fungible token. Digital sculpture composed of “Hello, World” wiki database file, perl cgi-script, digital render, live website url. https://www.editthisnft.com/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi? Home Page Minted on November 29, 2021.
This work is unique.

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