Jimmy Wales - Wikipedia

Curiosity is defined by Wikipedia as "an unknown number of behavioural and psychological mechanisms, which have the effect of impelling beings to seek information".

For simplicity's sake, the online encyclopaedia could replace that rather wordy interpretation with the name of its founder, Jimmy Wales, for he is the embodiment of the term.

"Look at this tree over here," the bearded, bespectacled 42-year-old says, as he bounds across the unkempt lawn of his back garden in suburban St Petersburg, Florida on my last visit.

"Do you think these are oranges or grapefruit? Maybe lemons," he adds as he bends to peer at the large, yellowish fruit on his tree. "They are too big and round for lemons, too yellow for oranges and too small for grapefruit."

And with that, he's off towards his modest, single-storey home, unidentified fruit in hand.

Wales is best known as the founder of Wikipedia, a project he began as a hobby in 2001 with a former friend, Larry Sanger, which has now ballooned into the largest encyclopaedia in human history.

Wales’s name has been bandied about in Washington circles as a potential candidate for the role of “technology Czar”, should Obama ever seek to appoint one. But his personal views may exclude him from the running.

“I'm really opposed to the terminology of "Czar" across all aspects of government,” he says. “It gives the wrong idea, and is offensive to the ideals of liberty that are what America should be about.  I hope that we are now returning to those more traditional values of a serious respect for individual human rights.

“Having said that, I do think that we need a CTO - Chief Technology Officer - for the US government.  In my view, this job title does not suggest a role in interfering with private industry or setting some kind of top-down technology policy for the nation.  Rather, it is simply an acknowledgment that the US government is an enormous enterprise, and that it needs to be managed responsibly.”

Such a figure should immediately “undertake a comprehensive top-to-bottom assessment of the technology failures of the US government, with an eye towards implementing the kinds of solutions that have worked for thousands of other large enterprises,” Wales believes.

The Wiki model of organising and editing data is employed by hundreds if not thousands of big corporations all over the world.

“What we are seeing is that large corporations, and governments, are using wikis as a tool for information management and communication,” Wales says. “The strength of the tool is its great flexibility - the software makes no assumptions about the kinds of knowledge that people might share, and no assumptions about who might be in a position to share knowledge usefully.  Those things are left to the users of a wiki to discuss and decide.”

Wiki communities, and the type of communication they encourage, can also have great social benefits, Wales insists.

“Bringing together groups of people using collaborative software and, more importantly, a set of social norms and techniques that encourage high-quality collaboration, can have great impact on a number of social problems, including environmental, economic, and political,” Wales says.

“It's a bit too simple to say it this way, but it is nevertheless true: freedom is a great responsibility, and to make the most of it, we need to work in peace with others to learn the true facts about the world so that we might make more sensible decisions.”

The rigors of running Wikia and the publicity surrounding his quasi-celebrity lifestyle have taken their toll on Wales’s personal life. He no longer lives with his wife Christine and daughter Kira at the modest suburban house in Florida where I first met him.

He had a brief relationship last year with Rachel Marsden, a Canadian journalist who contacted him while researching a Wikipedia entry. The relationship sparked controversy, however, and he ended it as quickly as it had begun. Marsden claims she learned of the break up on Wikipedia and was so angry she immediately auctioned on e-bay a sweater and t-shirt she says Wales left at her house.

It is no wonder Wales, an “objectivist” who subscribes to the philosophy of Ayn Rand, has had relationship problems. He seems to spend 90 per cent of his time travelling around the world to speak to crowds of acolytes or otherwise promoting his life’s work.

As my visit to Wales’s home drew to a close he finally took a knife to the unidentified fruit from his back yard and sucked out some of the juice. “It’s a lemon,” he yelped, puckering his lips and sucking in his cheeks at the bitterness.

“Let’s make lemonade.”