
World Brain: The Idea of a Permanent World Encyclopædia (1937) - yk
https://sherlock.ischool.berkeley.edu/wells/world_brain.html
======
AlexeiAndreev
Wow, that's quite visionary. By the way, our startup is about doing exactly
this: [https://arbital.com/p/Arbital/](https://arbital.com/p/Arbital/)

We are starting with mathematics, but plan to expand to all other topics as
well. If you are interested in contributing, join our slack channel or
newsletter
([https://arbital.com/newsletter/](https://arbital.com/newsletter/)). We are
planning to roll out small projects soon, which people can contribute to.

~~~
__mbm__
Interesting. How does arbital see itself in relation to Wikipedia's math
pages? It seems like you are trying to make it more accessible, like the
Wikipedia simplified English descriptions

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grabcocque
It'll never catch on.

On a more serious note, although it superficially sounds like he's talking
about Wikipedia (in 1937... WHOAH) he probably isn't. The idea he's describing
seems to be a very elite-driven technocratic idea, suffused with the sorts of
imperialist ideals you'd expect an educated European in 1937 to expound.

~~~
jasode
_> The idea he's describing seems to be a very elite-driven technocratic idea_

Right, he imagined a _top-down_ organization that collected and curated
information for the benefit of humanity. It seems like the trigger for HG
Wells imagination was the "microfilm". Using that technology, he could see how
vast quantities of information (old books in worldwide collections) could be
photographed, compressed into organizable filing system, and centralized in
one place.

The parallel of that to Wikipedia would be cheap hard drives holding terabytes
of information.

However, that _real_ radical innovation with Wikipedia was the _bottom-up_
crowdsourced contributions. People thought an encyclopedia authored by
_anybody_ without credentials would lead to useless trash. Amazingly, that
prediction didn't happen.

Personal anecdote.... I have contributed to several wiki articles and in one
entry about a novel, I corrected a paragraph that had incorrect information. I
simply rewrote the entire paragraph. At first, I thought a subsequent editor
would delete it since my edit came from an anonymous contributor. (I was not
logged in and only the ip address is recorded in the revision history which
means it might be flagged as "drive by vandalism"). It's been several years
and I occasionally revisit that page. Not only has my prominent edit stood,
but others have continued working around it. It's a weird accomplishment -- a
21st century version of "Kilroy was here."

~~~
derefr
What he's talking about actually seems like a sort of inevitability (which
still hasn't happened yet, but will): it's basically the (technocratic, top-
down) Dewey Decimal "filing" standard, but where each library has a copy of
_every_ book (and other media), instead of having to request inter-library
loans.

Soon enough, it won't make much sense to talk about "what's available at your
local library branch", instead thinking about "what's available in The
Library."

Of course, most things will only be available to be borrowed digitally, but
that's not _usually_ a problem if you had a need for the information rather
than a desire for the aesthetic experience of reading.

(And _hopefully_ that will include useful [e.g. 3D when necessary]
digitizations of all the old documents and artefacts that are currently
housed, for their own protection, in nobody-can-look-at-them archives _within_
libraries.)

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stephenboyd
Oh, this is HG Wells. I was thinking of Vannevar Bush's Memex from 1945 when I
saw the title.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex)

~~~
csours
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-
ma...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-
think/303881/)

The Memex was more of a personal brain, which still sounds amazing to me.

------
dredmorbius
Vaguely related, I've just turned up a 19th century revision war in some
related research.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4xe2k1/chamber...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4xe2k1/chambers_encyclopaedia_editorial_statement/)

[https://archive.org/stream/chambersencyclo00unkngoog#page/n1...](https://archive.org/stream/chambersencyclo00unkngoog#page/n13/mode/1up)

TL;DR: The British publishers of Chamber's Encyclopaedia were outraged to find
subtantial and ideological edits to numerous articles within their
encyclopedia.

I found the topic of particular interest as the first article listed as among
those changed was among the topics I was hoping to see detailed in the
publication.

There's some additional history (I'm in the midst of compiling more
background), but the fact that the American publisher was backing economic
viewpoints strongly opposed to those gaining the upper hand in Britain may
just possibly have had something to do with this.

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TimJRobinson
Are there any projects to build a decentralized Wikipedia? Perhaps using ipfs
or similar technology. I did some brief searching but couldn't find anything.
It would be a great step forward to ensuring we have a permanent
indestructible knowledgebase anyone can access.

~~~
white-flame
Wikipedia at least does offer full content torrents now & again so the
internet can back up their work or have local mirrors, which would make it
survive catastrophic failure of Wikipedia itself.

------
erring
Before you jump to Bush, Licklider, "the internet", Wikipedia and the like for
recent analogies, it's worth remembering that some years _before_ Wells
actually wrote this, Paut Otlet's Mundaneum and other related "world brain"
projects were underway. Their fruits were very much in place and functioning,
and were tragically destroyed during the Second World War, ironically the
enabler of the information technologies we so admire today.

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Stephen_T
I love articles like this as it makes me wonder what article of today will be
seen as profound or rudimentary a century from now - talk of DAO's, holidays
on Mars, or how the Blockchain will cure all ills?

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LELISOSKA
aka the internet

------
markwaldron
This just reminded me of the joke from HIMYM:

Marshall: Whats that?

Ted: A 1986 world book encyclopædia. Just the one I grew up with.

Marshall: An encyclopædia?

Ted: [laughing] Oh! You think it should be pronounced encyclo-pee-dia. I'ts a
common mistake. But if you look at that squished together "ae" symbol in this
here encyclopædia, you'll learn that it's a ligature derived from the Anglo-
Saxon rune ash...

[shelf breaks and falls]

Marshall: You know, you're gonna have to pædia for that.

