Literary genre

Way, way, way too much running and fighting.

Also way too idealistic :Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism.

Also the good/evil is way too black and white.

If only everything was instead funny and charming and intelligent like the very first part in the Shire... that section and others interspersed withing the running are good film level.

Ciro Santilli is old enough to remember his parents whispering its name with a respectful tone.

Genius: Richard Feynman and Modern Physics by James Gleick (1994) mentions several times how Richard Feynman was a reader of the encyclopedia. E.g. in youtu.be/ivxkd98mDvc?t=50 Richard's sister also talks about it.

Then the Internet came along and killed it.

The motivation model for collaborators was simple: to get famous. To be able to be selected contribute an article meant that you knew something or two! There was some physicist Ciro read the biography of who was really glad to be able to write an article on the encyclopedia after having worshiped it for so long, TODO find the reference.

While this is somewhat a part of Wikipedia motivation, it is much less so because there is no single article authorship. This is something OurBigBook.com aims to improve.

The impact of the work is greater when you examine what one single new technology would do to existing society, as in Primer (2004), rather than "start on a society with severl new technologies", like in Star Wars.

Extremelly ironic that it was bought by Oxford University Press and ceased to be "Home University". University is broken.

Related concepts:

The Google Story Chapter 21. A Virtual Library mentions that Paul Allen was interested in trying to create something like the "Final Encyclopedia" from this book. This is somewhat the same motivation for Google Books and Google's activities more broadly, as shown in their organise the world's information mission statement.