{"id":2824,"date":"2014-07-16T13:08:38","date_gmt":"2014-07-16T17:08:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/?p=2824"},"modified":"2014-07-16T13:08:38","modified_gmt":"2014-07-16T17:08:38","slug":"otlet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/?p=2824","title":{"rendered":"Otlet"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read a lot of books, pinballing amongst genres and across disciplinary declevities as I please, and investigating some very odd (or at least infrequently-visited) corners of the print world. Mostly I don’t try to inflict my idiosyncratic tastes on others, but sometimes a book comes along that’s just too good not<\/i> to make a fuss about. Today’s case in point: <\/p>\n

Alex Wright’s Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age<\/b><\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Paul Otlet is probably not a person you’ve encountered before (and if he’s already familiar to you, I’d like to know how), but he belongs in the same visionary realm as Melvil Dewey (of library cataloging and 3×5 card fame), Ted Nelson (who instantiated hypertext), Tim Berners-Lee (pater of the World Wide Web), Doug Engelbart (of Mother of All Demos fame), Vannevar Bush (Memex and As We May Think), JCR Licklider (Man-Computer Symbiosis, ARPA), and a clutch of others (Watson Davis, Patrick Geddes, Emanuel Goldberg, Otto Neurath, John Wilkins) who will probably also be new to you. These people are arguably the primary architects\/engineers\/makers of the electronic world we all inhabit. The book is especially commended to <\/p>\n