In this section I will go through the twelve year evolution of Cyc, how the proposal was carried out. This will bring interesting issues about knowledge representation in general. I will distinguish between four phases in this evolution. The period of the project getting off the ground during 1984-1986 as depicted in [Lenat et al., 1986], the state of Cyc as it is depicted in the book mostly written before 1990 [Lenat and Guha, 1990], the midterm report [Guha and Lenat, 1990] and their AI journal discussion of the methodology [Lenat and Feigenbaum, 1991,Smith, 1991], and the current state of affairs in 1996[Lenat, 1996]. I would like to have played with the system myself, to get an objective view of the performance. However the bureaucracy has been holding down my efforts for the last four months. All my observations, thus, are based on reading reviews. I will trace the evolution in three dimensions: content, representation and modularity.