World Brain

"Reading the 1955 paper once again reminds me of the inspiration that the concept had from my early interest in encyclopaedism. In 1970, Manfred Kochen commented on its role in the worldwide encyclopaedic movement.13 Today the Internet has enabled the development of Wikipedia and other grand schemes that will make the H.G. Wells dream of a World Brain a reality. 13. Kochen M. WISE - world information synthesis and encyclopedia. J Document, 1972; 28:3 22 - 343."

"Like Otlet, Wells has assembled in his essays and addresses ... a preview of the World Wide Web: a colossal, globally accessible compendium of everything knowable. Although the World Wide Web clearly lacks the authority and editorial consistency both Otlet and Wells favor, the notion of a practicable universal source of information preceded the realities of the Internet and the World Wide Web by several decades. (pp. 151-2)"

"The march of the modern and the reconstitution of the world's knowledge apparatus : H.G. Wells, encyclopedism, and the world brain"