Dec. 10, 1944: Web Visionary Passes Into Obscurity

Wired’s This Day in Tech Blog remembers Paul Otlet and his dream of organizing the world’s information. Sound familiar?

“Some historians see in Otlet’s work a prototype of the World Wide Web and the hyperlink. Although unsuccessful, it was one of the first known attempts to provide a framework for connecting all recorded culture by creating flexible links that could rapidly lead researchers from one document to another — and perhaps make audible the previously unheard echoes between them.”