Not dissimilar

Tracing back the posthumous invention of the internet, and how the internet turned into Google

2003

'Otlet imagined a day when users would access the database from great distances by means of an “electric telescope” connected through a telephone line, retrieving a facsimile image to be projected remotely on a flat screen. In Otlet’s time, this notion of networked documents was still so novel that no one had a word to describe these relationships, until he invented one: “links.” Otlet envisioned the whole endeavor as a great “réseau”—web—of human knowledge.'

2007

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  Bernard Otlet

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  Bernard Otlet

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  Bernard Otlet

Bernard Otlet (great-grandson): Paul Otlet, inventor of the internet

2008

'Building Society, Constructing Knowledge, Weaving the Web: Otlet’s Visualizations of a Global Information Society and His Concept of a Universal Civilization'

'Paul Otlet's visionary Mundaneum was a proto-internet made of 3-by-5-inch index cards'

2009

Jean-Michel Djian, "Le Mundaneum, Google de papier" & "le Mundaneum, a posé les bases de la science documentaire – et préfigurait Internet avec un siècle d’avance." Jean-Paul Deplus quoted in Jean-Michel Djian: "Ils ont inventé Google avant la lettre. Non seulement ils l’ont fait avec les seuls outils dont ils disposaient, c’est-à-dire de l’encre et du papier, mais leur imagination était si féconde que l’on a retrouvé les dessins et croquis de ce qui préfigure Internet un siècle plus tard."

2010

'He also wrote extensively about the need for a universal network for the communication of knowledge. His theoretical approach to the organi-zation and dissemination of information was far ahead of its time, notably in foreshadowing the Internet, Hypertext, and the World Wide Web.'

2011

"Netzvisionär Paul Otlet: Googles genialer Urahn. Er plante ein mechanisches Gehirn und kabellose Kommunikation: Der belgische Bibliothekar Paul Otlet entwarf Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts die erste Suchmaschine der Welt - lange vor Computern und Internet. Warum gerieten seine revolutionären Ideen in Vergessenheit?"

'Our view is that the creative ways in which he [Paul Otlet] faces tensions of scalability, representation, and perception of relationships between knowledge objects might be of interest today.'

2013

'The unsung heroes of the Internet'

2014

'The idea of the internet was born in Belgium. Idea No.1: The Mundaneum'

"L'homme qui a presque inventé le cyberespace : Paul Otlet"

"Le père (belge) de l’idée du web"

2015

"C’est « Le Monde » qui appelé le Mundaneum, « Google de papier », une expression qui a fait florès. (...) C’est dans la ville du doudou qu’on peut désormais revoir ce qui reste de cette grandiose utopie, d’avant l’ordinateur."

'Years later, Paul brought clarity and a future to the project through his vision for the Mundaneum: a universal system of written, visual, and audio information that people could access from the comfort of their own homes. The roots of that vision took hold just a few decades later when engineers planted the technological seeds that brought electronic information sharing to life.'