This gem comes via Bretton Vine that electronic bloodhound of eclectic digital media trivia!
Dave
The Web Time Forgot (login required)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/science/17mund.html
By ALEX WRIGHT
MONS, Belgium — On a fog-drizzled Monday afternoon, this fading
medieval city feels like a forgotten place. Apart from the
obligatory Gothic cathedral, there is not much to see here except
for a tiny storefront museum called the Mundaneum, tucked down a
narrow street in the northeast corner of town. It feels like a
fittingly secluded home for the legacy of one of technology’s
lost pioneers: Paul Otlet.View this photo
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.”
Historians typically trace the origins of the World Wide Web
through a lineage of Anglo-American inventors like Vannevar Bush,
Doug Engelbart and Ted Nelson. But more than half a century before
Tim Berners-Lee released the first Web browser in 1991, Otlet
(pronounced ot-LAY) described a networked world where “anyone in
his armchair would be able to contemplate the whole of creation.”
Although Otlet’s proto-Web relied on a patchwork of analog
technologies like index cards and telegraph machines, it
nonetheless anticipated the hyperlinked structure of today’s Web.
“This was a Steampunk version of hypertext,” said Kevin Kelly,
former editor of Wired, who is writing a book about the future
of technology.
[...]
Stumble It!
Comments