Paul Otlet

A Belgian visionary often credited as the father of information science and a precursor to the internet age. He created the Mundaneum, an ambitious project intended to collect and organize the world’s entire body of knowledge through a massive card catalog system. In 1934, he described a "radiated library" where people could access information from their homes using a screen and a telephone line. He envisioned a "Universal Network" that would allow for the instant sharing of ideas to foster global peace and understanding. This work proved that the drive for a global, interconnected brain existed long before the first computer was built. What is a mind if not a node in a larger network?