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His 1938 book ''World Brain'' is a series of essays on how a world organization of scholars might build a "World Encyclopaedia" which

His 1938 book ''World Brain'' is a series of essays on how a world organization of scholars might build a "World Encyclopaedia" which

:could spread like a nervous network, a system of mental control about the globe, knitting all the intellectual workers of the world through a common interest and a common medium of expression into a more and more conscious co-operating unity and a growing sense of their own dignity, informing with pressure or propaganda, directing without tyranny.<ref>Wells, H. G. (1938), ''World Brain,'' p. 33; from Books for Libraries Press facsimile edition.</ref>

:could spread like a nervous network, a system of mental control about the globe, knitting all the intellectual workers of the world through a common interest and a common medium of expression into a more and more conscious co-operating unity and a growing sense of their own dignity, informing with pressure or propaganda, directing without tyranny.<ref>Wells, H. G. (1938), ''World Brain,'' p. 33; from Books for Libraries Press facsimile edition.</ref>

''World Brain'' in some ways, with hindsight, seems to prefigure the Internet&mdash;but with a dignified sense of serious purpose that is quite unlike the Internet. Wells may in some ways have been more prophetic, or at any rate more savvy in his 1899 novella ''A Story of the Days to Come,'' when he wrote:

''World Brain'' in some ways, with [[hindsight]], seems to prefigure the Internet&mdash;but with a dignified sense of serious purpose that is quite unlike the Internet. Wells may in some ways have been more prophetic, or at any rate more savvy in his 1899 novella ''A Story of the Days to Come,'' when he wrote:

:This phonographic machine was the size and shape of a Dutch clock, and down the front of it were electric barometric indicators, and an electric clock and calendar, and automatic engagement reminders, and where the clock would have been was the mouth of a trumpet. When it had news the trumpet gobbled like a turkey, "Galloop, galloop," and then brayed out its message as, let us say, a trumpet might bray. It would well Mwres in full, rich, throaty tones about the overnight accidents to the omnibus flying machines that plied around the world, the latest arrivals at the fashionable resorts in Tibet, and of all the great monopolist company meetings of the day before. If Mwres did not like hearing what it said, he had only to touch a stud, and it would choke a little and talk about something else.<ref>Wells, H. G., (1899), "A Story of the Days to Come," from ''Tales of Space and TIme." Quotation is from pp. 193-4 of a Dover reprint edition, "Three Prophetic Novels of H. G. Wells."</ref>

:This phonographic machine was the size and shape of a Dutch clock, and down the front of it were electric barometric indicators, and an electric clock and calendar, and automatic engagement reminders, and where the clock would have been was the mouth of a trumpet. When it had news the trumpet gobbled like a turkey, "Galloop, galloop," and then brayed out its message as, let us say, a trumpet might bray. It would well Mwres in full, rich, throaty tones about the overnight accidents to the omnibus flying machines that plied around the world, the latest arrivals at the fashionable resorts in Tibet, and of all the great monopolist company meetings of the day before. If Mwres did not like hearing what it said, he had only to touch a stud, and it would choke a little and talk about something else.<ref>Wells, H. G., (1899), "A Story of the Days to Come," from ''Tales of Space and TIme." Quotation is from pp. 193-4 of a Dover reprint edition, "Three Prophetic Novels of H. G. Wells."</ref>