Michael Hart

OCCUPATION Computer consultant, founder of Project Gutenberg

GOAL To create a global Internet library of literature and reference works

QUOTE "We want to break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy"

In the 1970s, when access to computers was limited and expensive, Michael Hart's pals at the University of Illinois computer lab gave him what amounted to $100 million worth of free computer time. Hart, son of a Shakespeare professor and a mathematician, decided to harness the new technology to humanistic ends by posting a copy of the Declaration of Independence that anyone with a computer and a modem...