World Brain

World Brain by H.G. Wells was published in 1938. In it the author imagined what he called the Permanent World Encyclopaedia. Wells envisioned creating a knowledge system containing all humanity’s intelligence and wisdom and be freely accessible to all. In his mind, the World Brain would be a synthetic, authoritative and permanent storage of knowledge which could help people make the best and simplest use of universal information resources. Wells thought the utopian idea of access to a universal information resource would enable people everywhere to make better decisions and avoid conflicts. Today, Wikipedia and the internet could be a tangible manifestation of his predictive vision. However, contrary to his hopes and convictions, we are far from world peace.