Editing World Brain (section)

== Background ==
{{See also|Encyclopedism}}
Plans for creating a global knowledge network long predate Wells. [[Andrew Michael Ramsay]] described, c. 1737, an objective of [[freemasonry]] as follows:<ref name=Heylighen>Francis Heylighen, "[http://www.sociostudies.org/almanac/articles/conceptions_of_a_global_brain_an_historical_review/ Conceptions of a Global Brain: An Historical Review]", in ''[https://publications.hse.ru/en/books/135069644 Evolution: Cosmic, Biological, and Social]'', ed. H. Barry et al.; Volgograd: Uchitel, 2011.</ref>

<blockquote>... to furnish the materials for a Universal Dictionary ... By this means the lights of all nations will be united in one single work, which will be a universal library of all that is beautiful, great, luminous, solid, and useful in all the sciences and in all noble arts. This work will augment in each century, according to the increase of knowledge.</blockquote>

The [[Encyclopédistes|Encyclopedist]] movement in France in the mid-eighteenth century was a major attempt to actualize this philosophy. However, efforts to encompass all knowledge came to seem less possible as the available corpus expanded exponentially.<ref name=Heylighen />

In 1926, extending the analogy between global telegraphy and the nervous system, [[Nikola Tesla]] speculated that:

{{blockquote|When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain ...
Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone.  A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kennedy |first=John B. |date=30 January 1926 |title=When woman is boss – An interview with Nikola Tesla |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A-McAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA4-PA17 |journal=[[Collier's Magazine]] |pages=77}}</ref>}}

[[Paul Otlet]], a contemporary of Wells and [[information science]] pioneer, revived this movement in the twentieth century. Otlet wrote in 1935, "Man would no longer need documentation if he were assimilated into a being that has become omniscient, in the manner of God himself." Otlet, like Wells, supported the internationalist efforts of the [[League of Nations]] and its [[International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation]].<ref name=Heylighen /><ref name=Reagle>{{cite book |last=Reagle |first=Joseph Michael |author-link=Joseph M. Reagle Jr. |date=2010 |title=Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia |series=History and Foundations of Information Science |location=Cambridge, MA |publisher=[[MIT Press]] |isbn=9780262014472 |oclc=496282188 |url=http://reagle.org/joseph/2010/gfc/}}</ref>{{rp|21–24}}

For his part, Wells had advocated [[world government]] for at least a decade, arguing in such books as ''[[The Open Conspiracy]]'' for control of education by a scientific elite.<ref name=Reagle />{{rp|24}}