Forgotten Forefather
November 11, 2003
Paul Otlet (1868-1944) was a Belgian bibliographer, pacifist and entrepreneur who helped found the League of Nations, invented the Universal Decimal Classification, and dreamed up something very much like the World Wide Web (even, arguably, the Semantic Web) as early as 1934.
Otlet's reputation has since plunged to near-obscurity, largely due to forces beyond his control (like World War II). But I think Otlet's vision still matters, for reasons I've tried to explore in a new article for Boxes & Arrows, Forgotten Forefather: Paul Otlet.
(No time to read? For a taste of Otlet, try this Quicktime clip, courtesy of filmmaker Fran�oise Levie).
File under: Publications
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