Reading and Writing Encyclopedias in the Digital Age: The Spiritual Birth of Knowledge

In recent years, it has been widely observed that the relationship between humans and information has become increasingly instantaneous and fleeting. The proliferation of this ephemerality is inevitably shaped by factors such as the transformation of needs into immediate gratifications, people’s growing habit of rapid consumption, and the reduction of an entire world to notifications that fit on a small screen. In this context, what should be the measure when we take in information or present it to the world? For instance, when gazing at the endless pile of data on the first page of a search engine, where do we begin to assert that “this is true information”?

For a mind newly encountering the internet, guidance is typically provided by the dominant algorithms of the era. This situation continues through the courageous process of developing one’s own intellectual filter and acquiring the authority to read critically. This process can be considered a healthy factor in human cognitive development and the search for meaning. Conversely, it is also possible that a mind never able to establish its own research domain has grown up feeling “occupied” by information bombardment.

Whether superficial or deep, copied or original, continuing to seek truth while accepting all possibilities… For a person whose strength lies in their own intellectual curiosity, merely “clicking and moving on” or retreating in frustration from information pollution are not viable alternatives. At certain stages of life, one is swept up by the internet’s pace; at others, one strives to understand meaning without even looking at the screen. One grows weary, the mind becomes clouded, and algorithms are blamed. In truth, all these turbulent states may be the pains of intellectual maturation. Years after superficial reading, experiencing one’s own intellectual depth becomes an opportunity to endure the effort of distilling information with encyclopedic rigor. To be pregnant with information and give it rebirth: to attain truth, and thereby find life within one’s own essence…

The chapter of belonging that arrives with longing for pages of sources, old books, and the scent of libraries may be as solid a root as any that binds a person to truth. Feeling connected to humanity’s heritage, sensing the origin of a word, establishing trust with a reliable text, a page of an encyclopedia visited daily… This sense of belonging is what enables such trust. A person carries within their mind a fragment of what they read or research—a concept, a perspective, a methodology. To weigh the scales fairly, to never omit a single source in writing or to give it its due, to remain impartial and avoid falsehood—these are the legacies passed down to us from the past. They are the markers of recognition: true information is distinguished from millions of data points by its solidity, consistency, and fairness. Thus, information is chosen from its heritage.

For a person who witnesses their own intellectual filter, these legacies are precious and rare fragments. Making visible the invisible heritage of centuries-old knowledge by filtering it through one’s own lens, and then presenting it on a platform like KÜRE as a “gem,” is the fruit of a great struggle that demands both respect for information and love for truth.

Classifying and preserving the traces left by past thinkers as marks of humanity may be the most compassionate treatment we can offer these traces. When we see ourselves as one link in a chain that spans before us, within us, and after us, accepting these insights as encyclopedia entries becomes a force that carries both our own minds and humanity’s heritage of belonging beyond the present. Taking the patient reading of the past and uniting it with the speed of the digital, transferring the precision of the printing press to the accessibility of the screen… Fast or slow—every trace is information because it is information; true because it is true. It must not be static; it must be deeper, more intimately known, and must learn to honor reading and understanding.