A Google Doodle today celebrates Paul Otlet, co-creator of one of the net’s predecessors, the Mundaneum, “an institution set up in 1910 which had the aim of trying to gather all the world’s knowledge and index it in a vast bank of drawers.” Its index card system is still used in libraries, and its guiding principle that everyone should have access to the sum of human knowledge is still something to aspire to.
And there has to be an adventure hook in there - aliens trying to steal it? The sum total of human knowledge in one place has to be useful for something. These days they’d have to go for one of those purposely anonymous server farms dotted around the world, like one owned by Google itself, and a chase through corridors lined with index card drawers sounds more fun...
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