Type of site Digital library Commercial no | Website cd3wd.com (defunct) Current status discontinued | |
Created by Alex Weir (1948 - 2014) Slogan(s) A CD for third world development. | ||
CD3WD was a project that focused on assisting in third world development by making technical documents and other relevant information easily available to all people. Created by Alex Weir in 2003, the concept was to share useful DIY guides and technical information for free using CDs. The name CD3WD comes from "CD for the Third World Development". In later versions of the project the archive was distributed on DVD. The last version that is available online (2012 version) was a total of 6 DVDs (core set) and 32 DVDs of extra educational content.
Contents
Content of the project
CD3WD gathered a massive free electronic library of largely donor-generated information on agriculture, forestry, fisheries, food processing, engineering, appropriate technology, water and sanitation, education, health, etc. This information came mostly from NGO's and governmental agencies. The information was structured into topics and was the 6 DVD core set. The main language of the project was English but there were also parts in other languages. The core set was available from the project's webpage and by DVD's sent by mail.
The project also had an educational extra part of 32 DVD's with educational content from sources like Khan Academy, Wikipedia for Schools and Project Gutenberg. This part of the project was limited to DVD's sent by mail because most of the content was easy to find online.
The survivalists interest
CD3WD was focused on gathering and spreading information to assist third world development but the project got a lot of its attention from survivalists. The information in the archive handled a widespread area of practical topics relevant to preppers. This, the structure, and the offline nature of the CD3WD archive made it ideal for survivalists. In 2013 author Annalee Newitz wrote about humans surviving a global extinction event, saying "If we’re lucky, the hangers-on will have access to a repository of human knowledge called the CD3WD database"
The discontinuation of the project
After the death of Alex Weir in 2014 the project stopped and the project domain "cd3wd.com" was taken over. It is no longer connected to the project. There is still a mirror page of the 2006 version of the website and a torrent of the 2012 version of the project's DVD's available online.