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Computer scientist Vrandečić:
"We only cook with water"
Photo: Victor Grigas
The future began on April 1st, 2020. On that day, Zdenko Vrandečić published his vision of how the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia could become ten times larger and also more reliable and up-to-date.
The project is called »Abstract Wikipedia«.
The timing is well chosen: Wikipedia has grown up and is looking for a new direction.
The idea of the »Abstract Wikipedia« sounds almost like an April Fool's joke: Vrandečić wants to invent a kind of universal language to generate lexicon entries and keep them up to date.
All Wikipedia entries that were written in English, for example, could then also be read in Swahili - and vice versa.
"That sounds ambitious, but actually we only cook with water," says Vrandečić.
The 42-year-old with the square glasses has Croatian and US citizenship, but he grew up in Stuttgart.
Today he lives with his family in California.
His name is Denny in the scene, that's easier.
He sits in a good mood at home between cardboard boxes and empty shelves.
The computer scientist recently quit Google and has just moved to a cheaper place to stay in Berkeley, California, to work on his new project as an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation.
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