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THE worldwide web puts everybody in touch with everything, but if only Paul Otlet’s ideas had matured safely and successfully it would have been with us a lot earlier. How come, I hear you say.
Well, Paul Otlet was a genius of a Belgian Librarian who, in 1934, came up with a plan for a worldwide network of computers or “electric telescopes” as he called them.
This would let people do everything they do today. But history was not on Otlet’s side and he suffered a series of misfortunes, the worst of which was the German invasion of Belgium and the subsequent destruction of most of his work. A genius who had no place to go, a genius who had no chance to book his place in the hall, but a genius who has been recognised at last.
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