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Even Before Memex, a Plan For a Networked World
phlurg writes "The New York Times presents an amazing article on 'the Mundaneum,' a sort of proto-WWW conceived of by Paul Otlet in 1934. 'In 1934, Otlet sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or "electric telescopes," as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. He described how people would use the devices to send messages to one another, share files and even congregate in online social networks. He called the whole thing a "réseau," which might be translated as "network" — or arguably, "web."'
A fascinating read." (You may be reminded of Vannevar Bush's "Memex," which shares some of the same ideas.)
It shows the difficult part of ideas isn't dreaming them up, it's actually realizing them.
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"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
No article to be slashdotted...
Indeed, "reseau" (but with an accent, which didn't show up when I pasted it) is the word used in French for "network", in both computer and other senses.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
The Memex was (or would have been) a personal workstation, not a networked device. True, it had hyperlinking, but only among documents on the same device. This Mundaneum seems to be entirely network-centric.
The ultimate in prior art for the US Patent office. :-)
What an amazing visionary. Well I guess he was right on the button. Heck that basically describes web 2.0 before web 0.1 was invented. He is right on target.
This kind of reminds me of the guy who wrote a 10 page article on the year 2008. He was right about a lot of things but was wrong about a ton of things (trailer homes, bubbles, going 300 mph in a computer driven car).
But I must say this guy is a genius. He was 70 years ahead of his time because the whole concept of "online communities" is a rather new idea (about 3 to 5 years at the most)
Réseau is the french word for network!
Otlet would probably be very satisfied that we'd come far enough to his life's vision that we can just hear about him, then click to read his vision (of hearing about him then clicking to read his vision).
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make install -not war
Everybody interested in the history of the web and its predecessors in the line of networked electronic information storage, management and retrieval systems should check out Alex Wright's talk at Google called "The Web That Wasn't": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72nfrhXroo8. Very interesting!
French is a fictional language, much like Klingon or Tolkien's Elvish languages. No one speaks it natively, so what words might mean is of little practical value.
Interesting that the NYT should run an article on this precisely a month after New Scientist did.
That ranks right up there with Jules Verne, Victor Appleton (The house name author of five generations of Tom Swift Novels), and (sadly) George Orwell in the Accurate Vision of the Future category.
Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
I'm still waiting for my repelatron drive and my visitor from Planet X.
...some surplus machines from Babbage & Co.?
Kidding aside, anyone who can look at an enormous, overwhelming task of such mind-boggling complexity and think "I can do that." is deserved of high praise, regardless of whether he succeeded or failed.
Twelve years later than, but more accurately predicting the internet and sites like Google.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Logic_Named_Joe
The story's narrator is a "logic" (that is, a personal computer) repairman nicknamed Ducky. In the story, a logic named Joe develops some degree of sentience and ambition. Joe proceeds to switch around a few relays in "the tank" (one of a distributed set of central information repositories analogous to servers on the World Wide Web) and connect all information ever assembled to every logic, and simultaneously disables all of the censor devices. Logics everywhere begin offering up unexpected assistance, from designing custom chemicals to alleviate inebriation to giving sex advice to small children or plotting the perfect murder. Information runs rampant as every logic worldwide crunches away at problems too vast in scope for human minds.
-- Boycott Shell
I'm surprised that we aren't using it today. With a name like Mundaneum, people are sure to come running in droves.
We had communities before the internet. They were called Bulletin Boards Services (BBS) where people could hang out and exchange ideas. And back when the internet was this mythical thing that only people who lived in ivory towers could experience we had CompuServe followed later by the hideous beast AOL.
Folks,
Réseau is the French word for "network", and we all know what France's only contribution to networking is. This was a proto-minitel. It is kinda like the internet, but you have to pay per-minute access fees, have slower connections, limited functionality, and have to work through a monopolistic PTT.
- doug
PS: Yes, he was Belgian, but who really can tell the difference?
obviously you can see how his upbringing shaped his life's work and life's focus. to me, there are all kinds of crazy pluses and minuses to this idea of stifling your child's social upbringing in order to encourage his intellectual upbringing. of course, you need social skills in life to really succeed. at the same time, there is something genuinely valuable to be said about focusing a child's intellectual development in solitude. there's obvious trade offs here, but otlet seems to be a success, in a narrow focused way. one wonders at examples of lives that are failures of this kind of upbringing though
people always mention the successes of this kind of focused upbringing, like tiger woods or the williams sisters in tennis (parents focusing their kid's athletic talents). or parents who focus their children to be masters of the piano or cello. but for every yo-yo ma, one never hears about the hundreds who wind up as burn-outs, drug addicts or prostitutes
its an interesting subject, the focused childhood solitary education
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I thought Al Gore invented the internet.... and pants.
was that it was called the mundane-um
why not call it the snore-ium or boring-um
anyone with knowledge of advertising or public relations knows you have to give something like this a snazzy name, the excite-o-porium, nor the neato-gonzo-hyperium, or the whatsthat?-OMFG-ium
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Different people will get the same idea at different times. Just because you are first does not mean the other did not have the same original idea.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Why hasn't anyone mentioned this documents' potential as prior art? (Or have they).
Are there any patents that would could be revoked based on prior art found in this document?
"Fascinating, Jim."
YouTube has a nice video on the subject. http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZPBpXlZumNg
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
... the World Wide Waffle?
? syntax error
There's an interesting talk about this very topic up on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72nfrhXroo8
The archive's sheer sprawl reveals both the possibilities and the limits of Otlet's original vision. Otlet envisioned a team of professional catalogers analyzing every piece of incoming information, a philosophy that runs counter to the bottom-up ethos of the Web.
This seems more like a real-time encyclopedia than the entirety of the web, like the next step beyond the Encyclopedia Britannica with its professional editing of contributed articles. The Britannica would have been in the process of switching to updating through supplements when he conceived this, and he could hardly have missed the controversy surrounding that move. This was a grand vision, and the fact that he was able to implement it even in abbreviated form is remarkable.
In some respect the invention of the telegraph changed the world forever because communications could be simultaneous around the earth. This would prevent gaffs like the Battle of New Orleans fought 29 years earlier, TWO WEEKS after the treaty ending that war had been signed because communications were so slow.
The capital burden of laying wires across continents and oceans helped create the modern corporations and banks. (In conjunction with railroads, steel, coal and petroleum development). There were wild economic booms and busts, not unlike the mainframes in the 1960s. PCs in the 1980s and dot.coms in the 1990s. The telegraph fueled modern media with a desire for today's news rather than weeks old letter and magazines.
The telegraph spawned other modern inventions. Randall Stoss's recent biography of Thomas Edison re-interprets the inventor in light of the dot.com boom. Several of Edison's inventions were aimed at cramming more messages on precious telegraph lines. The telephone arose out of the effort to send messages at different messages at separate frequencies. Voice is just using all frequencies. Several people beat Edison here, but he invented the first practical microphone. The phonograph was originally intended to record telegraph messages offline, then transmit them and record them at super-human speeds across precious telegraph lines. Recording and playing messages by themselves without the intervening telegraph became its own invention - the phonograph.
Even earlier, the concept of a world-spanning network of thought had previously been developed by other thinkers predominantly known in the French-speaking world as well (most notably dissident cleric Pierre Teilhard de Chardin) under the name of noosphere - the field of mind(s).
It never seemed to have made much of an impact in English until famously picked up and popularized by Eric S. Raymond (and in another variant referred to by John Perry Barlow as "Cyberspace, the new home of Mind"), recognizing the importance in retrospect when The Net was young.
Why, when (insert some inventor/writer/anybody in particular) gets their life's work (jacked up by Nazis/eaten by elephants/some other horrible fate) are they always "broken"? Why not "pissed off for a couple of weeks" while they get really drunk, recover from the hangover and then update their resume so they can find a new job? Or, relieved that they can finally get on with their life and other things... like the honey do list the missus has been pestering them with since shortly after their honeymoon?
I'm just sayin'...
No Nyarlathotep, No Chaos
Know Nyarlathotep, Know Chaos
What about N Tesla, hasn't he also dreamt up a network connecting the world through his coil, although he also wanted to distibute power with it?
is it too late to mention how awesome a Beowulf cluster of electric telescopes would be?
Thanks, mate. That's something that's going on the all-time favourites list.
February 9th, 2009 8:55pm: Slashdot becomes self-aware.
Eh?