A chief difference is that with a wiki there's a canonical current version which everyone is working from. With written manuscripts there's ... just a bunch of different (usually handwritten) variations and modifications of a manuscript.
(Modifications wouldn't have been made to a single print copy, usually, though there are such practices as marginalia.)
What you'd see especially are commentaries on works. E.g., Averroes's commentaries on Aristotle, or the many commentaries which accompany Sun Tzu's text (itself likely a compilation) in Art of War.
That said, good observation. I've been suggesting for some years that the wiki is itself a distinct form of literature, though itself with some precursors, such as loose-leaf bindings which enabled the notion of a loose-leaf service in which a book could be continuously updated over time, dating to the late 19th century:
dredmorbius|3 years ago
A chief difference is that with a wiki there's a canonical current version which everyone is working from. With written manuscripts there's ... just a bunch of different (usually handwritten) variations and modifications of a manuscript.
(Modifications wouldn't have been made to a single print copy, usually, though there are such practices as marginalia.)
What you'd see especially are commentaries on works. E.g., Averroes's commentaries on Aristotle, or the many commentaries which accompany Sun Tzu's text (itself likely a compilation) in Art of War.
That said, good observation. I've been suggesting for some years that the wiki is itself a distinct form of literature, though itself with some precursors, such as loose-leaf bindings which enabled the notion of a loose-leaf service in which a book could be continuously updated over time, dating to the late 19th century:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_leaf>
See for example Nelson's Encyclopedia:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson%27s_Encyclopaedia>
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Homiletic_Review/YN...>
These were advertised (and I'm pretty certain patented) in the late 19th / early 20th centuries.
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Magazine_of_Busines...>
But as an evolution of recordkeeping forms: clay/stone tablets, papyrus scrolls, codices, moveable type (15th c), card catalogues (18th/19th c), punch cards (19th c), loose leaf (19th/20th c), databases (1950s), revision control (1970s) (Wiki entry: <https://expertiza.csc.ncsu.edu/index.php/History_of_version-...>), online books (Project Gutenberg), hypertext, and wikis, might be one phylogeny.
mafuy|3 years ago