In staring at the horizon to get a glimpse of tomorrow, it is all too easy to forget about those visionary minds in the past, with whom contemporary reality often still has to catch up. ‘a thousand tomorrows’ would like to put some of these fascinating people and their visions of the future back into the spotlight every now and then.

We start out today, on belgian soil with Paul Otlet (1868-1944). He has been called the founding father of ‘documentation’, now called information science, even one of the forefathers of the internet.

The lawyer Paul Otlet had an astonishing range of ideas and initiatives related to the organization of the world’s knowledge, including systems and new, at the time unexisting technologies which he envisioned and often pushed to see developed (examples included distance learning tools). Together with his friend and colleague, the Nobelprize winner Henri LaFontaine, Paul Otlet founded the Institut International de Bibliographie, later called the International Federation of Documentation and Information. Together they also founded the Union of International Associations which exists until this day, now with Anthony Judge as a main driving force behind the remarkable initiative. Among other things the UIA publishes the Yearbook of International Organizations, the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential, etc. titles clearly resonating Otlet’s mindset.

One of Otlet’s most ambitious projects, was the Mundaneum, a huge institute in which he wanted to bring together all the world’s knowledge in one place, a place where to make invisible things, ideas, visible (see also here). He got in touch with LeCorbusier to draw the plans (link). It would completely alter the way knowledge was stored, retrieved, worked with. It would need to be placed in a world city, which he had ideas about how it should be, but no definite location. In fact there exist maps, projections of his plans in several major cities in the world.

For more information on the man and his ideas, Prof. W. Boyd Rayward wrote a wonderful biography on Otlet which can be read online (pdf) (see also Michael Buckland’s Otlet pages). Be sure also to check out “Otlet and
Hypertext Visions of Xanadu“. Even more than using words, Otlet’s ideas are done justice by looking at his schemes and drawings. They show best his visionary mindset, his ever trying to push boundaries. Long forgotten, the internet both as a concept as well as as a technology has brought back Otlet and his ideas. My friend and former colleague Charles van den Heuvel, wrote an interesting article a while ago together with W. Boyd Rayward on Otlet, titled “Visualizing the Organization and Dissemination of Knowledge: Paul Otlet’s Sketches in the Mundaneum, Mons” (see also here).

Furthermore, what is left of Otlet’s legacy can be experienced at the current Mundaneum in the belgian city of Mons, an institute housing his huge collections of documentation and personal archives. The museum and archives, feature a scenography by the famous François Schuiten & Benoît Peeters, which some of you might know of their magnificent Obscure cities comic books. Schuiten recently also published a marvellous book on possible futures, titled “The Gates of the Possible”.
Last but not least, Françoise Levie made a documentary on Otlet’s life, titled ‘The man who wanted to classify the world‘. Also the dutch tv programme Noorderlicht made one, titled: ‘All the world’s knowledge‘ which can be viewed online. Theater Ad Hoc (see previous post) created a theatre piece titled ‘The humour and tragedy of completeness’ (in dutch) about the work and personalities of Otlet and La Fontaine.

update: Françoise Levie also published a book on Otlet recently, titled “L’homme qui voulait classer le monde”.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 26th, 2006 at 08:08 and is filed under visionary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.