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 naïvely 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.

Foreword
Bruce Sterling
Introduction
Joseph M. Reagle
Preface
I World Encyclopedia
(Lecture delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, November 20th, 1936)
II The Brain Organization of the Modern World
(Lecture delivered in America, October and November, 1937)
III The Idea of a Permanent World Encyclopedia
(Contribution to the new Encyclopédic Française, August, 1937)
IV Passage from a Speech to the Congrès Mondial de la Documentation Universelle, Paris, August 20th, 1937
V The Informative Content of Education
(Presidential Address to the Educational Science Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, September 12th, 1937)
Appendix I: Ruffled Teachers
(Sunday Chronicle, September 12th, 1937)
Appendix II: Palestine in Proportion
(Sunday Chronicle, October 3rd, 1937)
Appendix III: The Fall in America 1937
(Collier's, January 28th, 1938)
Appendix IV: Transatlantic Misunderstandings
(Liberty, January 15th, 1938)
Appendix V: The English Speaking World: "As I See It"
(Broadcast talk delivered December 21st, 1937)