In 1938, aged 72, English writer H. G. Wells published a little book of essays and speeches titled World Brain.

One essay titled "The Idea of a Permanent World Encyclopaedia" is remarkable in presenting a vision very similar to Wikipedia. This essay first appeared in the new Encyclopédie Française , August, 1937.

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." (p. 49) Wells felt that technological advances such as microfilm could be utilized towards this end so that "any student, in any part of the world, will be able to sit with his projector in his own study at his or her convenience to examine any book, any document, in an exact replica." (p. 54) 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.

Wells had been involved with the socialist Fabian Society, the League of Nations, and the International PEN, and his intent for World Brain was no less than helping to solve what he termed the World Problem, i.e. the possibility of the mutual destruction of nations in a World War. Wells has been both praised for envisioning an educational knowledge network (not unlike the Internet and World Wide Web) and criticized for proposing what to some amounts to a New World Order. His concept of a "world brain" has more recently been revived by others in the guise of the global brain.

See also: encyclopedia, history of Internet encyclopedia projects

References

• Wells, H.G. (1938). World Brain. Meuthuen & Co. Limited.

• "The Idea of a Permanent World Encyclopaedia": Contribution by H. G. Wells to the new Encyclopédie Française, August, 1937, also available from Karl-Erik Tallmo 's The Art Bin webzine.

• World Brain: H. G. Wells on the future of world education (1994) London: Adamantine Press. ISBN 0-7449-0114-6

• "H.G. Wells’s Idea of a World Brain: A Critical Re-Assessment" by Boyd Rayward

External links

• International PEN