WORLD BRAIN

Mostly remembered as a writer of science fiction, H. G. Wells was also a prolific non-fiction author. Here is a collection of his speeches collected into five main sections, based on different slices of his overall vision. At its heart was an encyclopaedia of all modern knowledge that would be constantly updated by thousands of experts. The talks and essays were given in 1937 and H. G. Wells proselytized for what he called a 'World Brain' as manifested in a World Encyclopaedia, a repository of scientifically established knowledge which would spread enlightenment around the world and lead to world peace. He was imagining something like the Internet, and a pre-digital Wikipedia. Behind the technology was the vision of Wells the internationalist who believed the nation state must pass away to bring world peace and that universal access to the truth would enable the uneducated masses to move towards this goal. It was a way for professionals to share information, a fact-based system for the school curriculum and a World Encyclopaedia containing true facts about everything from history to physics. These speeches were delivered when Wells was 70 years old and shows his idealism for an enormous political transformation and his anticipation of the Information Age. 129 page paperback.