Those limitations notwithstanding, Otlet's version of hypertext held a few important advantages over today's Web. For one thing, he saw a smarter kind of hyperlink. Whereas links on the Web today serve as a kind of mute bond between documents, Otlet envisioned links that carried meaning by, for example, annotating if particular documents agreed or disagreed with each other. That facility is notably lacking in the dumb logic of modern hyperlinks.
Otlet also saw the possibilities of social networks, of letting users "participate, applaud, give ovations, sing in the chorus." While he very likely would have been flummoxed by the anything-goes environment of Facebook or MySpace, Otlet saw some of the more productive aspects of social networking — the ability to trade messages, participate in discussions and work together to collect and organize documents.
Some scholars believe Otlet also foresaw something like the Semantic Web, the emerging framework for subject-centric computing that has been gaining traction among computer scientists like Berners-Lee. Like the Semantic Web, the Mundaneum aspired not just to draw static links between documents, but also to map out conceptual relationships between facts and ideas. "The Semantic Web is rather Otlet-ish," said Michael Buckland, a professor at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley.
Critics of the Semantic Web say it relies too heavily on expert programmers to create ontologies (formalized descriptions of concepts and relationships) that will let computers exchange data with one another more easily. The Semantic Web "may be useful, but it is bound to fail," Buckland said, adding, "It doesn't scale because nobody will provide enough labor to build it."
The same criticism could have been leveled against the Mundaneum. Just as Otlet's vision required a group of trained catalogers to classify the world's knowledge, so the Semantic Web hinges on an elite class of programmers to formulate descriptions for a potentially vast range of information. For those who advocate such labor-intensive data schemes, the fate of the Mundaneum may offer a cautionary tale.
The curators of today's Mundaneum hope the museum avoids its predecessor's fate. Although the museum has consistently managed to secure financing, it struggles to attract visitors.
"The problem is that no one knows the story of the Mundaneum," said the lead archivist, Stéphanie Manfroid. "People are not necessarily excited to go see an archive. It's like, would you rather go see the latest 'Star Wars' movie, or would you rather go see a giant card catalogue?"
Striving to broaden its appeal, the museum stages regular exhibits of posters, photographs and contemporary art. And while only a trickle of tourists make their way to the little museum in Mons, the town may yet find its way onto the technological history map. Later this year, a new corporate citizen plans to open a data center on the edge of town: Google.
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