What we know now

The story of knowledge transmission leads from scratches on clay to the big question of what happens to wisdom in the age of AI

- MARK FRYER

KNOWING WHAT WE KNOW, by Simon Winchester (William Collins, $37.99)

Sometimes, a great idea is all you need. Other times, even the best of ideas needs a little help.

In the 1890s, Belgian duo Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine had what must have seemed like an absolutely brilliant idea: assemble as much information as possible, write each factoid on an index card, store the cards in hundreds of specially made filing cabinets, cunningly index everything so the desired information can be easily retrieved, encourage anyone with a question to call on the telephone, and charge them 27 Belgian francs to find the answer.

The duo's collection of information came to be called the Mundaneum, and while it certainly grew - 150 rooms filled with millions upon millions of index cards - it didn't exactly thrive. Given the technology of the day, storing an evergrowing mountain of information, and then quickly finding it, were insuperable problems.

The help that Otlet and La Fontaine needed didn't arrive for a century, with the invention of the internet. With modern technology, tools such as Google and Wikipedia have finally been able to deliver what the Mundaneum promised - vast stores of information, retrieved almost instantly.

The Mundaneum is one of the odder detours in this history of - as the subtitle says - The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic.

Starting with a few thoughts on what knowledge actually is - something more than just raw data, apparently - it moves through the ways in which humanity has stored its accumulated knowledge and passed it on.