Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
When the web was in the egg
THIS Web thing: when was it hatched? Those interested in nearly practical history traditionally point to 鈥榮 1960 鈥� essentially an electronic quotation machine constructed around two-way links. It鈥檚 what scrupulous coders call the Right Thing. Every quotation 鈥渒nows鈥� where it comes from and every source work 鈥渒nows鈥� where it鈥檚 quoted. If you make money, a share automatically flows back to the authors you quote 鈥� dissolving many of today鈥檚 problems with authors鈥� rights and the internet (1 November, p 48).
Have Netgear鈥檚 customer service team had trying times? The power switch on Mark Ribbands鈥檚 new 鈥済igabit switch鈥� warns: 鈥淚f this switch is turned off the product will not work.鈥�
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We think the machine stops
CONVENTIONALLY, those looking for more general premonitions of the internet cite the essay 鈥溾�� by Vannevar Bush in the July 1945 issue of The Atlantic magazine. This proposed that using microfilm, 鈥淎 library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk.鈥�
Those of a more literary sensibility cite E. M. Forster鈥檚 1909 story The Machine Stops (do not follow the following link unless US copyright law applies to you: ). In it, ubiquitous social networking falls over 鈥� and real lives are doomed.
A world palace of knowledge
CLOSER to home, Feedback listed internet-like mentions in The World in 1984 鈥� a collection of predictions published by 麻豆传媒 in 1964 (25 January). That prompted a correspondence with , co-inventor of the World Wide Web. He kindly sent a DVD of about the Belgian visionary Paul Otlet.
Otlet鈥檚 father pushed him to study law to take over the family firm, and he detested it. He embarked on a bibliography of law reviews, to which end he standardised the and developed the .
Thus armed, he got carried away with a bibliography of everything. The documentary suggests Otlet invented microfilm archiving, in 1906. Then in 1914 he clandestinely published a proposal for a League of Nations, forerunner of the UN. Soon he got involved, along with architect Le Corbusier, in a hare-brained scheme to build a World Center 鈥� a city of knowledge (22 March 2008, p 46).
And in 1920 he opened the , a world palace of knowledge in Brussels. At its peak it held 15 million index cards and countless miscellaneous documents.
In 1934, Otlet published his , giving a complete description of an information web. Optimistically, he declared that 鈥渢he desk is no longer cluttered鈥�.
The Belgian government, perhaps suspecting pacifism, tried to shut down the Mundaneum in 1924 and again in 1934 鈥� when Otlet and supporters camped on its steps in protest. Occupying Nazi forces wrecked the building in 1941.
What remains of the archive is now in Mons, Belgium, and we will pay our respects when the museum fully reopens in 2015: details are at .
The future radio newspaper
RANDOMLY searching for more pre-internets, we turned up an illustration from Modern Mechanics magazine in June 1931. It has a 鈥渢ypical home of the future鈥� with a wall-mounted flat screen incorporating a 鈥渞adio newspaper鈥�: .
Almost as free as the birds
DIGGING further, we came across H. G. Well鈥檚 1938 book 鈥� now a pretty self-explanatory title. And in 1898 Mark Twain wrote of a character who 鈥渄ay by day, and night by night鈥� called up one corner of the globe after another, and looked upon its life, and studied its strange sights, and spoke with its people, and realized that by grace of this marvellous instrument he was almost as free as the birds of the air, although a prisoner under locks and bars鈥�. Twain spoiled the prescience thing by titling his story .
Web with woo-woo prose
BACK at our cluttered desk, the marvellous instrument that is the 21st-century internet delivers an invitation to a 鈥渟ound healing鈥� workshop: 鈥渋mmerse your soul in the beautiful and powerful rare sound tools that will be gathered in one space鈥�. Getting away from it all and lying down to the sound of the featured 鈥渃rystal bowls鈥� could be relaxing, if we could get into an appropriately accepting frame of mind. And it cost 鈧�120 for the weekend, for those already on the island of Majorca.
Your mileage may vary, but we would find it hard to stop giggling, given that the workshop brochure at featured a smorgasbord of fruitloopery including a 鈥渓ook at the body as Sacred Geometry鈥� and a promise to 鈥渆xplore the physical structure of Sound and its reflection in Nature鈥�, but curiously omitting 鈥渜uantum鈥� or 鈥渟calar field鈥�.
Singing bowls not for a song
BUT, but鈥� where is the money in the abovementioned 鈥渟ound healing鈥�? Ah! At we find a 150-millimetre for $999 and a 350 mm version for $3999. Oh, and , a sarcastic gift for the hippiephobe in your life, from $899.
Proto-punk singing bowls
FINALLY, to be fair, the , appearing with proto-punk , use similar-looking bowls to trigger some fine sounds from digital synthesisers.