Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, 2nd Edition

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The World Brain

In 1936 and 1937, English author Herbert George Wells gave a series of public lectures on a rather peculiar topic. By this time, H. G. Wells was in his early seventies. His famous science fictions novels—The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds—had been published in the 1890s and made him famous. But Wells had evolved into a public intellectual who thought deeply about social and political issues and shared these thoughts with the public.

The lectures that Wells delivered in 1936 and 1937 were published in book form in 1938 under the title World Brain. In these talks, Wells proposed a type of encyclopedia, but not one that would be created for commercial ...