Cataloging the World

Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age

By: Alex Wright

Narrated by: John Lee

The dream of capturing and organizing knowledge is as old as history. From the archives of ancient Sumeria and the Library of Alexandria to the Library of Congress and Wikipedia, humanity has wrestled with the problem of harnessing its intellectual output. The timeless quest for wisdom has been as much about information storage and retrieval as creative genius. In Cataloging the World, Alex Wright introduces us to a figure who stands out in the long line of thinkers and idealists who devoted themselves to the task. Beginning in the late 19th century, Paul Otlet, a librarian by training, worked at expanding the potential of the catalog card, the world's first information chip. From there followed universal libraries and museums, connecting his native Belgium to the world by means of a vast intellectual enterprise that attempted to organize and code everything ever published. Forty years before the first personal computer and fifty years before the first browser, Otlet envisioned a network of "electric telescopes" that would allow people everywhere to search through books, newspapers, photographs, and recordings, all linked together in what he termed, in 1934, a reseau mondial essentially, a worldwide web. Otlet's life achievement was the construction of the Mundaneum, a mechanical collective brain that would house and disseminate everything ever committed to paper. Filled with analog machines such as telegraphs and sorters, the Mundaneum, what some have called a "Steampunk version of hypertext" was the embodiment of Otlet's ambitions. It was also shortlived. By the time the Nazis, who were pilfering libraries across Europe to collect information they thought useful, carted away Otlet's collection in 1940, the dream had ended. Broken, Otlet died in 1944.Wright's engaging intellectual history gives Otlet his due, restoring him to his proper place in the long continuum of visionaries and pioneers who have struggled to classify knowledge.

©2014 Alex Wright (P)2014 Audible Inc.

What a fascinating book

Well, to me it was. I'm a bit of a geek for classification and semantics and databases and utopian visions. I can't actually think who of my friends I would recommend this to, but if the above description fits you too, you'll probably like this book. It takes you back to the beginnings of the Information Age when it was all new, and makes you realise - it's all history taking its course, and it all could have gone differently. Just to see things from that early perspective is interesting. That said, having just listened to the book I've forgotten most of the practical things which Otlet actually did or proposed - I think this book could definitely have delved more into specifics and evaluations of Otlet's proposals and left out a bit of the historical stuff. More Glass Bead Game, less feuilleton so to speak.

Amazing Exploration of the history of Information

The narration is perfect, not too fast, not too slow (also very clear and easy to understand). And this book is a powerhouse of history, intellectual movement, and pre information age exploration into what made the web. It is framed as a bio on Paul Otlet, but it also covers the context of his lifetime, the information history of Europe, and the flow and uses of information from ancient times as well.

for all librarians

this book is super interesting if you want to know more about the WWW knowledge