World Brain

World Brain
H G Wells, Bruce Sterling
RRP:
NZ$ 45.00
Our Price:
NZ$ 36.00
Paperback
h203 x 133mm - 176pg
3 Aug 2021 US
International import eta 7-19 days
9780262542562
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
In 1937, H. G. Wells proposed a predigital, freely available World Encyclopedia to represent a civilization-saving World Brain. In a series of talks and essays in 1937, H. G. Wells proselytized for what he called a "World Brain," as manifested in a World Encyclopedia--a repository of scientifically established knowledge--that would spread enlightenment around the world and lead to world peace. Wells, known to readers today as the author of The War of the Worlds and other science fiction classics, was imagining something like a predigital Wikipedia. The World Encyclopedia would provide a summary of verified reality (in about forty volumes); it would be widely available, free of copyright, and utilize the latest technology. Of course, as Bruce Sterling points out in the foreword to this edition of Wells' s work, the World Brain didn' t happen; the internet did. And yet, Wells anticipated aspects of the internet, envisioning the World Brain as a technical system of networked knowledge (in Sterling' s words, a "hypothetical super-gadget"). Wells' s optimism about the power of information might strike readers today as naively utopian, but possibly also inspirational.
H. G. Wells (1866-1946) was a prolific and best-selling author of novels, short stories, and social commentary. Among his best-known works are The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, War of the Worlds, and Tono-Bungay. Bruce Sterling is a Hugo Award-winning science fiction author. Joseph M. Reagle Jr. is the coeditor of Wikipedia @ 20 and the author of Hacking Life (both published by the MIT Press) and other books.
Status: Indent title, imported to order
ISBN-13: 9780262542562
Published: 3 Aug 2021
Published In: United States
Imprint: MIT Press
Publisher: MIT Press
Format: Paperback
Height: 203mm
Width: 133mm
Pages: 176

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