[SKRIVA] World Wide Wells
- From: "ahrvid@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <ahrvid@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: skriva@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2008 01:38:14 +0100 (CET)
(Skrev nedanstående på engelska för utländska listor, men artikeln kan vara
intressant här också. --AE)
I was reading a book on computers and the history of the information machine,
namely Computers - A History of the Information Machine (by Martin Campbell-
Kelly and William Aspray, Basic Books, 1996), when I suddently stumbled upon
the following passage (abbreviated by me):
"In the years between the two world wars a number of leading thinkers began to
wonder whether it might be possible to /organise/ the world's knowledge
systematically ... The most prominent member of this movement was the British
socialist, novelist, and science fiction writer Herbert George Wells ... During
the 1930s he wrote pamphlets and articles and gave speeches about his project
for a World Encyclopedia. /Wells promoted the idea in the US on a speech tour,
also appearing on the radio:/ In his talk, entitled 'The Brain Organisation of
the Modern World', Wells explained that his World Encyclopedia would not be an
encyclopedia in the ordinary sense: ... This Encyclopedic organisation need not
be concentrated now in one place; it may have the form of a network /that/
would constitute the material beginning of a real World Brain."
Wells never explained *how* his World Brain would be networked. He mentioned
having all information on microfilm, but during his time there were telegraphs,
teleprinters, telefaxes and even early television that could be used for
sending information. There's one of his articles about the idea on the web (
https://sherlock.ischool.berkeley.edu/wells/world_brain.html ) where he says:
"As the core of such an institution would be a world synthesis of bibliography
and documentation with the indexed archives of the world. A great number of
workers would be engaged perpetually in perfecting this index of human
knowledge and keeping it up to date. Concurrently, the resources of micro-
photography, as yet only in their infancy, will be creating a concentrated
visual record. ... By means of the microfilm, the rarest and most intricate
documents and articles can be studied now at first hand, simultaneously in a
score of projection rooms. There is no practical obstacle whatever now to the
creation of an efficient index to all human knowledge, ideas and achievements,
to the creation, that is, of a complete planetary memory for all mankind. ...
It can be reproduced exactly and fully, in Peru, China, Iceland, Central
Africa, or wherever else seems to afford an insurance against danger and
interruption."
My computer history book even says Wells was invited to lunch at the White
House (in the late 1930s) where he presented his idea of a "World Brain" to
president Roosevelt who however "had more pressing problems" (the coming war,
no doubt). And "Wells left the lunch a disappointed man."
But our World Brain That Came to Be, Wikipedia on the Web, does have an
article about the World Brain concept of Wells: http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/World_Brain , noting e g:
"World Brain is the title of a book of essays by English author H.G. Wells,
written in 1938. ... The essay 'The Brain Organization of the Modern World'
lays out Wells' vision for '...a sort of mental clearing house for the mind, a
depot where knowledge and ideas are received, sorted, summarized, digested,
clarified and compared.' ... A similar view of an automated system for making
all of humanity's knowledge available to all had been proposed a few years
earlier by Paul Otlet, one of the founders of information science."
(There is an article about Paul Otlet too, http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Paul_Otlet , who promoted a similar idea and began implementing it in
the form of an information centre, with index cards and files, from which
people could order info by mail.)
As we can see, the idea of organising all information in the world more
efficiently is not exclusive for H G Wells and comes from "a number of leading
thinkers", but it seems he was one of the most active *promoters* of the idea -
writing books and articles, speaking on the radio, even approaching the White
House - and it is important that he proposed the World Brain should a) use
modern technology (like microfilm), and b) be distributed.
His World Brain is not too far from the Internet and World Wide Web. H G
Wells must be considered as the (or an) intellectual father of the Net! And
when the first computers came they were often called "Electronic Brains".
Another famous information network prediction is by Vannevar Bush in the
article "As We May Think" (July, 1945 - available here: http://www.theatlantic.
com/doc/194507/bush ) which goes into details about the info retreival system.
Bush also assumes some sort of microfilm.
H G Wells was a truly original thinker. Not only did he invent the literary
ideas of time machines, invisibility and interplanetary wars, he envisioned the
tank, warfare in the air, an atomic bomb - and something that comes close to
the World Wide Web.
But just let me close this little article (or speculation) on how H G Wells
"invented" the Net, by pointing towards an even better "prediction" from about
the same time.
In Murray Leinster's classic short story "A Logic Named Joe" (available
here
http://www.webscription.net/10.1125/Baen/0743499107/0743499107.htm ) from
1946, we read about a network of "logics" (his word for computer) that resemble
PCs or mini-computers, have access to lots of information and can provide
services, and even present some sort of multi-media. It is by far the best
early description of computers and networks as we know them today.
Except for Leinster, most early descriptions of computers in science fiction
are pretty lousy and dumb. Most writers could only imagine gigantic super
computers, and missed miniaturisation, distributed intelligence, graphical
interfaces (old sf computers all talked - like HAL 9000) and most things that
we recognise today.
--Ahrvid
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