Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic

Simon Winchester examines how humans acquire, retain, and transmit knowledge across history and into the modern era. Tracing the evolution from the first encyclopedias to Wikipedia, and from ancient museums to contemporary classrooms, he explores how technology continues to reshape our relationship with information. With instant access to nearly any fact via smartphone, Winchester raises questions about the value of knowledge itself. As we rely increasingly on external sources, do we risk losing our capacity for thought and wisdom? He investigates how knowledge has been attained, stored, and shared through disciplines including education, journalism, museum curation, photography, and broadcasting—spanning from cuneiform writings in Babylon to artificial intelligence, and featuring examples like Gutenberg, Google, Wikipedia, and the Mundanaeum, a vast collection stored in a basement in northern Belgium. Throughout this exploration, Winchester considers whether the abundance of information without wisdom serves humanity, and whether foundational concepts like Descartes's "I think therefore I am" remain relevant in an age of outsourced thinking.