World Brain Quotes

“referencesmark”

“John Desmond Bernal#World Encyclopaedia”

“John Desmond Bernal#Different stages in the educational process”

“Wikipedia: World Brain”

“more...”

“The march of the modern and the reconstitution of the world's knowledge apparatus : H.G. Wells, encyclopedism, and the world brain”

“ I refuse to call myself foreign or alien among any people who speak, read and think in English. (p. 174) ”

“The Workshop will deal with the next level of international information systems, one stage above the Internet and the Web - humanity's global communication system / network - the World Brain / World Mind.”

“Although Wells could not have known it at the time, he was writing about the Internet and the World Wide Web. How amazed and delighted he would have been by this revolution had he lived another half century!”

“I want to talk about ourselves and the community to which we belong. I see that as a tremendous world brotherhood full of possibilities and full of promise for the hope, the peace, the common understanding of all mankind. (p. 186) ”

“We do not want dictators, we do not want oligarchic parties or class rule, we want a widespread world intelligence conscious of itself. To work out a way to that world brain organization is therefore our primary need in this age of imperative construction. (p. xvi) ”

“The human individual is born now to live in a society for which his fundamental instincts are altogether inadequate. He has to be educated systematically for his social rôle. The social man is a manufactured product of which the natural man is the raw nucleus. (p. vii) ”

“I am not saying ...; what I am saying ... is this, that without a World Encyclopaedia to hold men's minds together in something like a common interpretation of reality, there is no hope whatever of anything but an accidental and transitory alleviation of any of our world troubles. (pp. 34-5) ”

“Nothing can pull our minds together as powerfully as books. We all want to read books according to our interest and habits. We find them so dear to buy or so difficult to borrow that most of us cannot read half the books we hear about. And three-quarters of what books there are, we never hear about at all. (p. 189) ”

“The modern World Encyclopaedia should consist of relations, extracts, quotations, very carefully assembled with the approval of outstanding authorities in each subject, carefully collated and edited and critically presented. It would not be a miscellany, but a concentration, a clarification and a synthesis. (p. 20)”

“[The educated specialist] can increase knowledge, but without a modern organization backing him he cannot put it over. He can increase knowledge which ultimately is power, but he cannot at the same time control and spread this power that he creates. It has to be made generally available if it is not to be monopolized in the wrong hands. (p. 66)”

“Like Otlet, Wells has assembled in his essays and addresses ... a preview of the World Wide Web: a colossal, globally accessible compendium of everything knowable. Although the World Wide Web clearly lacks the authority and editorial consistency both Otlet and Wells favor, the notion of a practicable universal source of information preceded the realities of the Internet and the World Wide Web by several decades. (pp. 151-2)”

“ So that while I believe that ultimately the knowledge systems of the world must be concentrated in this world brain, this permanent central Encyclopaedic organization with a local habitat and world-wide range . . . yet nevertheless I suggest that to begin with, the evocation of the World Encyclopaedia may begin at divergent points and will be all the better for beginning at divergent points. (p. 74)”

“ An immense and ever-increasing wealth of knowledge is scattered about the world today, a wealth of knowledge and suggestion that -- systematically ordered and generally disseminated -- would probably give this giant vision and direction and suffice to solve all the mighty difficulties of our age, but that knowledge is still dispersed, unorganized, impotent in the face of adventurous violence and mass excitement. (p. 67)”

“ In my survey of the minimum knowledge needed to make an efficient citizen of the world, I laid great stress upon history. It is the core of initiation. History explains the community to the individual, and when the community of interests and vital interaction has expanded to planetary dimensions, then nothing less than a clear and simplified world history is required as the framework of social ideas. The history of man becomes the common adventure of Everyman. (pp. 141-2) ”