GOOGLE AND THE WORLD BRAIN

In 1937, H.G. Wells predicted the creation of the “World Brain”, a vast global library containing all of human knowledge that would lead to a new form of higher intelligence. Seventy years later, the realisation of this dream was well underway when Google started scanning millions of books for its Google Books website. However, more than half of these books were still protected by copyright and groups of authors around the world launched a campaign to stop the scanning. In 2011 Google ended up in court in New York.