Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age 1st Edition

Wright's <i>Changing the World</i> is a fascinating portrait of Paul Otlet, an information scientist (and man of letters and public intellectual) who was not only in the 1930s able to foresee the future and anticipate both the World Wide Web and Google search as well as add some additional elements that we haven't yet brought into the mainstream of information sharing, but he was able to actually build much of this with the elements that he had available at the time--index cards, microfiche, and the like. He was, like Google, concerned with the organization of the world's knowledge. In contrast to Google, he was deeply concerned about world peace, and his universal organization of knowledge (BTW, the Library of Congress system of classification is basically a spin-off of otlet's) was an integral part of a much larger vision of world piece--a vision that he shared with La Fontaine (who won the Nobel Peace Prize), Le Corbusier and others. He envisioned his palace of knowledge as part of a League of Nations, devoted to world peace. Wright tells the story of Otlet and his vision with compelling prose and insightful analysis and in the process gives Otlet his proper place in the development of knowledge. A terrific read.

A fantastic read about a man that was the steampunk analog Google before there were computers. Paul Otlet's story as told by Alex Wright is riveting. The author pulls you in with a Nazi raid on Otlet's work. I thought to myself, "Where could it go from here?" Well the story goes from continent to continent, famous characters from the arts, politics and scientists. It perfectly illustrates how one man's obsession can influence the world...even if his ideas were way ahead of his time. There is a sadness to the man's life but also a prevailing sweetness of the allegiance to his work. His understanding that all things are connected and should be accessible to all of mankind is illustrated by the sheer influence his obsession has had. His work involved some of the greatest architects, like Corbusier, writers, world leaders and artists. How a book about the history of library science can be this interesting, is a testament to wild passionate imagination of Paul Otlet and the writing skill of this author. Truly couldn't put the book down.

Can be wordy. Very dry, but gives a good overview of Paul’s life. Good for those really interesting in the topic. Not so much for those just dabbling in the topic.

Paul Otlet, one of many Fathers of the Internet" worked to establish a global means of classifying and sharing the world's knowledge. He was a man ahead of his time condemned to sing index cards and microfilm rather than bytes and dependent on meagre government handouts rather than advertising dollars. His story is an interesting prequel to the Internet Age.

This is a compelling read that connects some obscure dots leading from the early 20th century to the Internet Age. I'd had an interest in Otlet's work since about 2008, but little information was available. Here comes Alex Wright to tell Otlet's story. Great read.

Kindle version is already available. Fascinating story of social scientist Otlet's attempt to gather all the world's information in one place. Well-written and compelling narrative brings Otlet, his world, and his struggles to life.

Ok

Recommend.

Review of Alex Wright’s book “Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age”Here comes Alex Wright again, the author of “Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages”, in yet another well-researched and beautifully written book, “Cataloguing the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age”. Alex Wright is a librarian, an information architect, a professor and an author. It is fair to say, Alex Wright does not write as often but when he does, he does it with meticulous detail and professionalism. Our library here at Southampton Solent University just ordered a copy of this book. He is also such a fascinating storyteller. In this book, he tells us that a decade before Vannevar Bush wrote his seminal “As We May Think” article in 1945, before the invent of the World Wide Web by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (1989), well before the Google search engine, there lived a lawyer-turned librarian in Belgium by the name Paul Otlet, who in the 1930s envisioned an inter-connected web of multi-media documents on a screen which looked like today’s computer. He saw the the world wide web coming.Here is Otlet’s vision in his own words: "Everything in the universe, and everything of man, would be registered at a distance as it was produced. In this way a moving image of the world will be established, a true mirror of his memory. From a distance, everyone will be able to read text, enlarged and limited to the desired subject, projected on an individual screen. In this way, everyone from his armchair will be able to contemplate creation, as a whole or in certain of its parts." Paul OtletThe book is a biography of a person who spent all his life striving to help achieve a peaceful and knowledge-able world through his efforts of building an international library and a huge indexing and classification system. Alex presents Otlet as a giant man of international stature who has nonetheless remained rather an obscure and uncredited visionary.This book is also a biography of ideas rather than merely an account of the personal life of Otlet. As Wright delves deep in the interconnectedness of ideas and visions, he shows us a thread of ideas of knowledge organisation and classification schemes dating back from the first biggest library of Alexandria’s scrolls to Conrad Gessner’s catalogue, Bacon’s and Melvil Dewey’s classification schemes and from the memex to the creation of the world’s free and open encyclopedia, i.e. Wikipedia. As it is noted in the book, Otlet grew up with fascination for classification schemes that he created one when he was only fifteen. He later created the Universal Decimal Classification system. Otlet began work in libraries at an early age and it is reported that he was a voracious reader.The book portrays Otlet as a librarian, a peace advocate and visionary. It is stated that Otlet combined it all with an incredible passion until one gloomy day when his beloved country Belgium fell under the siege of Hitler. Thus, Otlet’s dream to build the world’s first paper-based Google-like index of global knowledge-base was tarnished by the Nazi’s conquest and he was forced to abandon the building he used to develop his library.What was once Otlet’s creation of a vibrant library with millions of books, magazines, newspapers, photographs and other relevant documents along with more than 15 million individual catalogue index card entries of published works which were all kept in a vast complex building of 150 rooms at the Palais Mondial in Brussels was confiscated by the Nazis, forcing Otlet to relocate his collection to another unsuitable building and a lot of the material being left to perish. As Wright tells us what is left from that is a historical footprint of great endeavour which was only recently uncovered by researchers.Apparently the Nazi’s saw no value in his collections. After all, Otlet was an internationalist and promoter of world peace, an ideology in stark opposition to the Nazi’s destructive idea of narcissism.Otlet writes “what the Nazis saw as a pile of rubbish, Otlet saw as the foundation for a global network that, one day, would make knowledge freely available to people all over the world” (p.8). What is astonishing about Otlet, as Alex Wright notes, is that his vision of a technology which resembles today’s computers and a network similar like that of the Internet upon which his index of world knowledge resides, which is the web. What an incredibly visionary person Otlet was. This led many researchers including Boyd Rayward, Alex Wright himself, the Mundaneum museum in Mons, Belgium and even Google itself not only chronicle Otlet’s works but also to acknowledge him as one of the precursors of the technology that came many years after Otlet. Hence this book that chronicles Paul Otlet’s history. Wright notes that Otlet’s vision was to build a centralised networked library, the Mundanem at an utopian city he thought would be Belgium (perhaps he saw the EU but not Brexit perhaps), whereby “that city would sit at the center of a new world government, transnational organisation (perhaps much like the UN), consisting of an international congress, judiciary, university, and a sprawling network of affiliated institutions and associations” p.9.Wright loves Paul Otlet. He also seems to love the history of ideas and libraries. I may safely say that for both Alex Wright and Paul Otlet it seems that libraries are not just mere collections of books but are centres of knowledge and promoters of world peace. Thanks to Alex Wright and others who brought his story to its right place, Paul Otlet is now considered as one of the great visionaries along with Vannevar Bush, Douglas Engelbart, Ted Nelson and Tim Berners-Lee.Reading this book, one can see that whilst Otlet was a practical person, his ideas and visions surpassed his practice. It can be seen he was such an optimist and peace loving man. As Wright notes Otlet “remained sure in his convictions” and was “a man driven by a sense of noble purpose”. Otlet indeed thought to catalogue the world – in a way that is happening with the world wide web, with Google, Linked Data and the Semantic Web. Hence, Otlet saw all this coming.

Belíssimo. Boa encadernação. Boa anatomia. Bom papel, impressão e cor. Gostei muito da capa dura vermelha. Entrega mais rápida do que a estimativa. Obrigado.