"The
whole human memory can be, and probably in a short time will be, made
accessible to every individual," wrote H. G. Wells in his 1938 prophecy World
Brain. "This new all-human cerebrum need not be concentrated in any one single
place. It can be reproduced exactly and fully, in Peru, China, Iceland,
Central Africa, or wherever else seems to afford an insurance against danger
and interruption. It can have at once, the concentration of a craniate animal
and the diffused vitality of an amoeba." Wells foresaw not only the
distributed intelligence of the World Wide Web, but the inevitability that
this intelligence would coalesce, and that power, as well as knowledge, would
fall under its domain. "In a universal organization and clarification of
knowledge and ideas... in the evocation, that is, of what I have here called a
World Brain... in that and in that alone, it is maintained, is there any clear
hope of a really Competent Receiver for world affairs... We do not want
dictators, we do not want oligarchic parties or class rule, we want a
widespread world intelligence conscious of itself."