Description: Knowing What We Know by Simon Winchester A delightful compendium of the kind of facts you immediately want to share with anyone you encounter New York TimesAn ebullient, irrepressible spirit invests this book. It is erudite and sprightlySunday Times FORMAT Hardcover CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description A delightful compendium of the kind of facts you immediately want to share with anyone you encounter New York TimesAn ebullient, irrepressible spirit invests this book. It is erudite and sprightlySunday Times From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classesâ"here is award-winning writer Simon Winchesterâ™s brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds.With the advent of the internet, any topic we want to know about is instantly available with the touch of a smartphone button. With so much knowledge at our fingertips, what is there left for our brains to do? At a time when we seem to be stripping all value from the idea of knowing things â" no need for maths, no need for map reading, no need for memorisation â" are we risking our ability to think? As we empty our minds, will we one day be incapable of thoughtfulness?Addressing these questions, Simon Winchester explores how humans have attained, stored and disseminated knowledge. Examining such disciplines as education, journalism, encyclopedia creation, museum curation, photography and broadcasting, he looks at a whole range of knowledge diffusion â" from the cuneiform writings of Babylon to the machine-made genius of artificial intelligence, by way of Gutenberg, Google and Wikipedia to the huge Victorian assemblage of the Mundaneum, the collection of everything ever known, currently stored in a damp basement in northern Belgium.Studded with strange and fascinating details, Knowing What We Know is a deep dive into learning and the human mind. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information without wisdom? Does René Descartesâ™ â˜Cogito, ergo sumâ™â"I think, therefore I amâ™, the foundation for human knowledge widely accepted since the Enlightenmentâ"still hold?And what will the world be like if no one in it is wise? Author Biography Simon Winchester is the bestselling author of ATLANIC, THE MAN WHO LOVED CHINA, A CRACK IN THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, KRAKATOA, THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD, THE SURGEON OF CROWTHORNE (THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN), THE FRACTURE ZONE, OUTPOSTS and KOREA among many other titles. In 2006 he was awarded an OBE. He lives in western Massachusetts and New York City. Review PRAISE FOR KNOWING WHAT WE KNOW:An ebullient, irrepressible spirit invests this book. It is erudite and sprightly in a way that will be familiar to anyone who has read Winchesters wonderful histories of the Krakatoa eruption, the origins of the Oxford English Dictionary and the Atlantic (among others) Sunday TimesA book about transmitting knowledge by someone who has made his name by doing just that in the most erudite and entertaining way possible . . . a delightful compendium of the kind of facts you immediately want to share with anyone you encounter . . . Simon Winchester has firmly earned his place in history . . . as a promulgator of knowledge of every variety, perhaps the last of the famous explorers who crisscrossed the now-vanished British Empire and reported what they found to an astonished world New York TimesFrom schoolhouses in ancient Sumeria and Aboriginal "songlines" to GPS, Wikipedia, Google and beyond, Winchester traverses the human history of information storage and transmission in a pageant of colourful, eloquent tableaux… Dont pigeonhole Knowing What We Know as "information science". Rather, think of it as an intellectual autobiography: one richly stocked, ever-curious minds account of the multiple ways in which stored knowledge may open the road to understanding Financial TimesWinchester is a knowledge keeper for our times, and he does us all a service by writing it down Wall Street Journal[Winchester] might be appropriately dubbed the One-Man Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge of our own era. Whatever his subject, Winchester leavens deep research and the crisp factual writing of a reporter . . . with an abundance of curious anecdotes, footnotes and digressions. His prose is always clear, but it is also invigorated with pleasingly elegant diction … Informative and entertaining throughout Washington Post Review Quote PRAISE FOR SIMON WINCHESTERS 2021 BOOK LAND The intricate vocabulary used to talk about land is one of the many pleasures ... The theme could not be more topical ... It packs in a wealth of ideas and human drama - and gives a fresh view of centuries of social conflict seen through a geographers lens Financial Times Spend some time with Simon Winchester, and you will sail oceans, survive earthquakes, peer into volcanoes, pore over maps, mine the origins of language and measure the immeasurable world ... Poignant ... Winchester is good ... adding dashes of drama, narrative, indignation and, above all, connection to disparate historical accounts ... There is soul in this book ... A stirring call for communal imperatives, even if its history recounts the constant allure of private ownership Washington Post Moving across varied histories and geographies, he offers us one case study after another of how the once seemingly inexhaustible surface of the Earth has devolved into a commodity ... Winchester is a master at capturing the Old World wonder and romance ... His prose frequently exudes the comfort and charm of a beloved encyclopaedia come to life, centuries and continents abutting through the pages New Yorker Few authors of narrative nonfiction have ranged across the global landscape more widely ... [A] unique blend of wide-eyed curiosity, meticulous research, and erudite analysis ... Of course, this being Winchester, Land abounds with dozens of eye-opening factoids to please any fan of popular history ... But this is no mere bathroom book packed with intriguing facts. His storytelling talents on full display Boston Globe Feature * PROLIFIC and BESTSELLING author of Surgeon of Crowthorne (120k) and The Map That Changed the World (150k) * This is a BIG HISTORY book, spanning twelve millennia and will appeal to fans of any era * INCREDIBLY RELEVANT TO TODAYS POLITICS, consider questions of oversight/power Details ISBN0008484384 Author Simon Winchester Year 2023 ISBN-10 0008484384 ISBN-13 9780008484385 Format Hardcover Imprint William Collins Place of Publication London Country of Publication United Kingdom Publication Date 2023-04-27 UK Release Date 2023-04-27 Subtitle The Transmission of Knowledge: from Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic Publisher HarperCollins Publishers Alternative 9780008484408 DEWEY 306.42 Audience General AU Release Date 2023-07-04 NZ Release Date 2023-07-04 Pages 432 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. 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