The web that could have been

[guyjin]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/science/17mund.html?_r=2&ref=science&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

(may require login, I dunno, I have Bugmenot)

The internet a few decades too early.

[Joe Redifer]

Summary, please.

[guyjin]

'In 1934, Otlet sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or "electric telescopes," as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. He described how people would use the devices to send messages to one another, share files and even congregate in online social networks. He called the whole thing a "réseau," which might be translated as "network" — or arguably, "web."

While he waited for these things to be invented, librarians did most of the work.

[Joe Redifer]

What an a$$hole!

Anyway I agree, Al Gore should have waited 20 or 30 more years before he invented the internet.

[ceti alpha]

That is pretty amazing. It's incredible to think how different history could have been if ideas and knowledge weren't suppressed or lost. Like Carl Sagan said, if the Library of Alexandria hadn't been destroyed/burned, mankind would have probably been launching rockets to the moon around 1200 AD.

[Necromancer]

Thankfully the web turned out to be far more than what Otlet envisioned, else we'd have nothing more than My Space and a less extensive, professionally edited wikipedia.  Still, he was quite the visionary; especially so, considering the technological limitations of the time.