The first web editor

In the years I have known my friend Bunny, she has chosen for herself many, many nerd boyfriends. Alas, they have eluded her for myriad reasons, sometimes being that they were engaged to other people or went off to far countries, or they were on TV or they were Michael Stipe.

But I think we should be officially the saddest about this one that got away: Paul Otlet, born in 1868 in Belgium, who, with his other laywer friend, invented the internet. The New York Times ran a piece on the museum which exhibits his works, called the Mundaneum, which unsurprisingly doesn't see quite as much traffic as the Louvre. In this, the year of its 10th anniversary, its curators are planning to publish what remains of Otlet's papers and ideas on the web, in hopes of giving him due credit in the evolution of the internet. Though he is not well-known for his influence, some give him the credit for inventing the hyperlink. From the article:

In 1934, Otlet sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or “electric telescopes,” as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. He described how people would use the devices to send messages to one another, share files and even congregate in online social networks. . .Otlet. . .described a networked world where “anyone in his armchair would be able to contemplate the whole of creation."

Although Otlet’s proto-Web relied on a patchwork of analog technologies like index cards and telegraph machines, it nonetheless anticipated the hyperlinked structure of today’s
Web. . .Otlet’s vision hinged on the idea of a networked machine that joined documents using symbolic links.

Eventually, he was given money to pursue his project, and set about creating a massive card catalog to house the world's information. People could send in requests, but eventually the project began to drown in its paperwork, and in 1934, he imagined a “'mechanical, collective brain' that would house all the world’s information, made readily accessible over a global telecommunications network."

Not much later, the Nazis invaded Belgium and destroyed much of his work, and his space was cleared out in favor of Nazi propaganda. He died with his ideas in a shambles in 1944.

In terms of nerd-factor, Paul was Bunny's ideal. His father didn't permit him to attend school until he was 12, operating under the theory that it would squelch imagination, so he spent his early years doing little but reading. “I could lock myself into the library and peruse the catalog, which for me was a miracle.” But the museum's current curators know what they're up against:

"The problem is that no one knows the story of the Mundaneum," said the lead archivist, Stéphanie Manfroid. "People are not necessarily excited to go see an archive. It’s like, would you rather go see the latest ‘Star Wars’ movie, or would you rather go see a giant card catalog?"

I know Bunny's answer.