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I wouldn't see this as a precursor to the internet. In fact, I'd see it as the opposite of the internet in important ways. The internet is a big decentralized n

I wouldn't see this as a precursor to the internet. In fact, I'd see it as the opposite of the internet in important ways. The internet is a big decentralized network where knowledge ends up accumulating through the countless individual actions of users, often in ways that are not terribly well organized from a logical standpoint. Of course, most of the important services that run on the internet are centralized now, but neither the internet infrastructure nor the world wide web is centralized or centrally planned, nor does it have a hierarchical structure; information is spread out, duplicated, codified etc. in different ways on different centralized services. In contrast, the Mundaneum seems to have been an attempt to create a top-down complete encyclopedia of information, organized in a rigid, rationalized, hierarchical logical structure. A beautiful logical diamond that would contain all knowledge. The project failed, and in fact all such projects have failed and will fail, although they continue to be appealing for some reason. Their rigid structures cannot cope with the diversity of information, its rapid change, or its amorphous nature in the same way that an unstructured network of linked servers or hyperlinked pages can. The success of the internet refutes the philosophy of the Mundaneum: rigid logical structures cannot contain human knowledge or activity; only something more freewheeling can work.

CaptArmchair 5y ago
I don't quite agree with that assertion. The fundamental problem remains the same in all cases: discovery of information. The Web as hypertext/hypermedia links documents and information, allowing for the creation of models that approach the heuristics used by humans to find information: following the trail of bread crumbs. However, catering to the need to find relevant information in an efficient way is a hard problem since 'relevance' is in all instances heavily tied to context. Google et al. are perceived as 'good' at helping someone to discover relevant information because they are experts at automatically gathering contextual information and leveraging that out-of-band while you just perform a fuzzy search based on a handful of keywords. Without these powerful affordances made available by a handful of large tech companies, the Web would be very hard to navigate in one's search for relevant information. Moreover, even though the Web seems to be doing a better job then physical library or encyclopedia: that's still perception. The "dark" part of the Web is still very large since it either isn't indexed or ranks very high in search results made available by major indexing tools like Google, Yahoo, Bing and others. If you want to do scholarly research, you're most often relegated to dedicated catalogues and instruments which rely on their own domain-specific classification systems to make information readily information in a digital fashion. So, it's not just about what you can discover on the Web, but - more importantly - about awareness of what you can't readily discover for lack of access through catalogues, indexes, search engines, etc. What really changed the way we look at information is that the Web allows pepole to not have to physically dive into index cards, catalogues and libraries to discover information. That one can just jump from library to library from the comfort of one's own home. And that was exactly what people like Otlet or Vannevar Bush or Ted Nelson were dreaming about.

CaptArmchair 5y ago

I don't quite agree with that assertion. The fundamental problem remains the same in all cases: discovery of information. The Web as hypertext/hypermedia links documents and information, allowing for the creation of models that approach the heuristics used by humans to find information: following the trail of bread crumbs. However, catering to the need to find relevant information in an efficient way is a hard problem since 'relevance' is in all instances heavily tied to context. Google et al. are perceived as 'good' at helping someone to discover relevant information because they are experts at automatically gathering contextual information and leveraging that out-of-band while you just perform a fuzzy search based on a handful of keywords. Without these powerful affordances made available by a handful of large tech companies, the Web would be very hard to navigate in one's search for relevant information. Moreover, even though the Web seems to be doing a better job then physical library or encyclopedia: that's still perception. The "dark" part of the Web is still very large since it either isn't indexed or ranks very high in search results made available by major indexing tools like Google, Yahoo, Bing and others. If you want to do scholarly research, you're most often relegated to dedicated catalogues and instruments which rely on their own domain-specific classification systems to make information readily information in a digital fashion. So, it's not just about what you can discover on the Web, but - more importantly - about awareness of what you can't readily discover for lack of access through catalogues, indexes, search engines, etc. What really changed the way we look at information is that the Web allows pepole to not have to physically dive into index cards, catalogues and libraries to discover information. That one can just jump from library to library from the comfort of one's own home. And that was exactly what people like Otlet or Vannevar Bush or Ted Nelson were dreaming about.