Jumat, 08 Juni 2012

Paul Otlet's idea of 'televised book' foretold the internet in 1934

Paul Otlet's idea of 'televised book' foretold the internet in 1934

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 19:57 EST, 7 June 2012 | UPDATED: 03:24 EST, 8 June 2012

Father of the net? Paul Otlet, a Belgian scientist, may have foretold the internet in 1934

Father of the net? Paul Otlet, a Belgian scientist, may have foretold the internet in 1934

A scientist in the 1930s may have been decades ahead of his time when he suggested combining a telephone connection with a TV screen.

While many have difficulty remembering the world without the internet, it was nothing more than imagination in 1934, when Paul Otlet described what would become the information superhighway.

TechNewsDaily reported that during a discussion of the world wide web's past, present and future at the World Science Festival in New York City on Saturday, Otlet’s name came up.

Otlet, a Belgian scientist and author who is already regarded as the father of information science, was on to something when he published his Treaties on Documentation.

Decades before the iPad, the Kindle, or even the computer screen, Otlet was devising a plan to combine television with the phone to send and spread information from published works.

In his Treaties on Documentation, Otlet referenced what would become the computer when he wrote: 'Here the workspace is no longer cluttered with any books.

'In their place, a screen and a telephone within reach…  From there the page to be read in order to know the answer to the question asked by telephone is made to appear on the screen.'

He went on to suggest that dividing a computer screen could show multiple books at once, a possible reference to opening a few browser windows or tabs at once.

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Technology: Otlet's vision involved combining the television and the telephone to send and receive information

Technology: Otlet's vision involved combining the television and the telephone to send and receive information

File sharing: Otlet's idea even involved what may be considered audio and video data

File sharing: Otlet's idea even involved what may be considered audio and video data

He called his vision 'the televised book.'

More than 30 years later, Otlet’s writings were first put into practice.

Also appearing at the World Science Festival discussion was Vinton Cerf, who was at the forefront of the world wide web when it was a military project in the 1960s.

Father of the internet: Also appearing at the World Science Festival discussion was Vinton Cerf, who was at the forefront of the world wide web when it was a military project in the 1960s

Father of the internet: Also appearing at the World Science Festival discussion was Vinton Cerf, who was at the forefront of the world wide web when it was a military project in the 1960s

The notion of the 'internet' was set in place when ARPANet was used to send a message between two computers set up side-by-side at 10.30pm on October 29, 1969 at UCLA.

It was sent by UCLA student programmer Charley Kline and supervised by Prof Leonard Kleinrock.

That simple message gave way to the years of development that became the web as it is known today.

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I thought that imbecile Al Gore said he invented the internet?

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Isaac Asimov predicted the Internet, he called it multivac, a vast planet wide computer, I believe he first wrote about this in the thirties

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Got to hand it to all these dead guys and gals. Gene Rodenberry had already invented the Warp Drive before he popped his clogs, don't you know?

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I bet he didn't envisage it being used to display pictures of the TOWIE girls in badly-fitting swimwear though.

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And way, way before that the Greeks had the Oracle at Delphi plugged in and on line to Apollo and the other the Gods - Nothing's new...................

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please don't blame me for Facebook ... really, I would have kept my ideas to myself if I had fully thought out the consequences ... you see, there used to be these things called 'books' and 'social functions' and I had no clue that they might disappear

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Taofledermaus, Slo-Mo on Youtube --- You should read The Machine Stops by EM Forster. It was first published in 1909.

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TREATIES = formal agreements TREATISE= dissertation

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One of the most-astounding predictions of personal computers and the internet was a 1946 sci-fi short-story called "A logic name Joe" by Murray Leinster. The story took place in the "future" of 1974 where people owned computers called "logics" that would access an internet for information, allow users to have video phone calls, and do tasks quite familiar to what computers today do. The story predicted how reliant we will be on computers too.

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Don't tell Al Gore!!!!

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