In 1934, Belgium visionary Paul Otlet sketched out plans for the the Mundaneum — a global network of computers (or “electric telescopes”) 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. He called the whole thing a “reseau,” which might be translated as “network” or “web.”

He laid out his vision of a “mechanical, collective brain” that would house all the world’s information, made readily accessible over a global telecommunications network, using telegraph messages.

Like the Semantic Web, the Mundaneum aspired not just to draw static links between documents, but also to map out conceptual relationships between facts and ideas.