love reading this guy’s ideas for what would have been a steampunk internet

Prior to the shift to computers — where you typically have computer programmers designing data structures and such — my understanding is that a lot of people worked on designing filing systems for humans to use, which was somewhat analogous.

The Mundaneum was an institution which aimed to gather together all the world’s knowledge and classify it according to a system called the Universal Decimal Classification. […]

[…] which eventually became an archive with more than 12 million index cards and documents.

Wow! …

When Nazi Germany invaded Belgium in 1940, the Mundaneum was replaced with an exhibit of Third Reich art, and some material was lost.

… sigh.