User:EmpAhmadK/Humans are the pillar of technology
7th February 2026
by Ahmad Ali Karim
Knowledge is to be shared for universal well-being, not to be kept far away from public reach. Records of the world’s greatest past civilisations have proven the importance of knowledge in charting a future of excellence.
Looking back at the history of mankind, many knowledge institutions have opened their doors for people to learn for free, while libraries serve as centres of resources for the masses to seek information.
However, we are now living in a different era. The world today demands a lot of economical profit, which makes it harder to provide necessary formal education to everyone for free.
Despite this, the human spirit to mutually build each other remains strong within ourselves. With the advancement of technology, there have been many new methods devised to allow us to help each other in building a global learning commons together.
A perfect example is Wikipedia, a website that serves as an open and free encyclopaedia made for all. Interestingly, its content is added, reviewed, and managed by volunteers among the public, the same people who also gain benefit from its very existence.
Since 15th January 2001, the website has become one of the main choices among the public when looking for any information on the internet. Therefore, I see Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary this year as not only a frivolous celebration. It is a sign of strong human dedication and cooperation on a global scale in upholding knowledge for our shared benefit.
Therefore, what we are celebrating is not the mere website, but instead are the people who have together built an ecosystem to ease the people across the world in attaining knowledge and information. I myself am proud to say that I am also part of the group of volunteers who have been contributing to this effort.
As a part of the greater Wikimedia open knowledge project, Wikipedia was followed by other projects that are also built by the masses for the good of the world, such as Wikidata which serves as the biggest and most open centre of structured data in the world, as well as Wiktionary which has benefited the speakers of many minority languages.
All of these projects are able to be operated in such order and spread across the whole world under the coordination of the Wikimedia Foundation, with support from its affiliate bodies from across the globe.
Today, these projects also serve as the backbone of the development of artificial intelligence (AI) which depends on this treasury of knowledge as the source of its information which it feeds back to us all.
Recently, I was invited by Wikimedia Deutschland as a representative of the Wikimedia movement in Malaysia to the Wikimedia Futures Lab which was held in Frankfurt, Germany.
Organised by Wikimedia Deutschland in collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation, it serves as a space for delegates from all over the world to sit down and discuss the challenges and plans for future strategies. The focus is on facing the future which challenges the reliability of information and knowledge.
We were given briefings and talks by experts and industry leaders on the global trends of knowledge consumption. We also discussed and planned on our efforts in building our local and global communities in a sustainable manner, such so that we can keep expanding our knowledge platform.
This is especially important in the current situation where our overreliance on AI not only makes a lot of us lazier in seeking for further detailed information, but also lazier to help others in such.
Every time I attend international conferences and events such as this one, I will always appreciate the humanity of this movement even more when I can see with my own eyes the humans who serve as the foundation to global free knowledge.
This time, I had the opportunity to meet with those who were responsible in building this ecosystem from the ground up since the inception of Wikipedia. Among them is Florence, a volunteer from France who initially contributed anonymously using an online name because she does not want to reveal her identity to others.
She later went on to being elected as one of the members of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, and her diligent hard work with her fellow friends have helped the movement grow with success until today.
I also had the opportunity to converse with the Chief Executive Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation, Bernadette Meehan, someone who I really respect as despite having a lot of experience, she still respects the views of youth members like myself.
As she said to me, this platform is inclusive in order to open room and opportunities to various different people who often are underrepresented on the global level. Indeed, over here we have learned to work together as one international community, moving beyond age, borders, and disciplines.
As an example, one of the volunteers who attended, Daryna, is a refugee from Ukraine who moved to Poland after the war in 2022. While striving to support her own needs, she never forgets to also keep serving back to the people of the world by disseminating knowledge.
I also had the chance to discuss with Ruby, a volunteer from Ghana who works hard in empowering the marginalised communities and women across all of Africa. She has also co-founded the Africa Wiki Women movement which is active in running campaigns and events internationally.
Not to forget the youth volunteers who are serving as the successors of this movement, at a time when most of the youth are too lazy to seek knowledge, let alone to contribute to its expansion. For example, Curtis and Ferdinando are both now leading the Wikimedia movements in Hong Kong and Italy respectively, despite both of them being only 20 years old.
These stories and more others are what reminds us that there is nothing that could ever break the human spirit to help each other in building ourselves and facing all the challenges ahead.
This high dedication is what has allowed us to build the most open and biggest knowledge centre in the virtual world for the past 25 years, despite being challenged by technological advancements and restrictions of access.
Although many people feel that the development of new technology such as AI will lead to us humans declining in our relevance, in the end, it is the humans who serve as the pillars that support technology itself. Humans remain to be the foundation of knowledge, no matter how the knowledge is presented.
This spirit must also be adopted by the whole world no matter through what field or platform. Not only do we need the will to learn more, but more importantly we need the will to give. Only with that will we be able to ensure a future that is truly sustainable and positive for all.
Content translated from original writing on Utusan Malaysia, dated 7th February 2026.