000			01723nam a22002057a 4500
999			_c4383 _d4383
005			20221217153034.0
008			221217b ||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
020			_a9780262542562
082			_a824.91 _bWEL
100			_aWells, H.G _99572
245			_aWorld brain
260			_bMIT Press _aCambridge _c2021
300			_axlii, 129 p.
365			_aUSD _b24.95
520			_aIn 1937, H. G. Wells proposed a predigital, freely available World Encyclopedia to represent a civilization-saving World Brain. In a series of talks and essays in 1937, H. G. Wells proselytized for what he called a “World Brain,” as manifested in a World Encyclopedia—a repository of scientifically established knowledge—that would spread enlightenment around the world and lead to world peace. Wells, known to readers today as the author of The War of the Worlds and other science fiction classics, was imagining something like a predigital Wikipedia. The World Encyclopedia would provide a summary of verified reality (in about forty volumes); it would be widely available, free of copyright, and utilize the latest technology. Of course, as Bruce Sterling points out in the foreword to this edition of Wells's work, the World Brain didn't happen; the internet did. And yet, Wells anticipated aspects of the internet, envisioning the World Brain as a technical system of networked knowledge (in Sterling's words, a “hypothetical super-gadget”). Wells's optimism about the power of information might strike readers today as naïvely utopian, but possibly also inspirational.
650			_aIntellectual cooperation _911022
650			_aSocial structure _98795
650			_aInternational education _911023
942			_2ddc _cBK