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Even Before Memex, a Plan For a Networked World

Posted by timothy on from the da-vinci-invented-everything dept.

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.)

3 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Good for him ... by YeeHaW_Jelte · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It shows the difficult part of ideas isn't dreaming them up, it's actually realizing them.

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    1. Re:Good for him ... by njfuzzy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm not sure I would agree with that. The best ideas are ones that seem obvious in retrospect, but had never been considered before. In some cases, implementation can be trivial, the real revolution is in proposing the solution.

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    2. Re:Good for him ... by samkass · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Seeing as no one else did it in the intervening 50 years, I'd not be too quick to call that the easy part.

      What's interesting to me is to see if any of this stuff can be submitted as prior art to invalidate as many of the recent web patents as possible.

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