essay by MARK ALIZART independent art curator, writer, and author of a recent book on computer science as a new religion, l’informatique céleste, mark alizart was curator of cultural programs for the centre pompidou (2001-06) and associate director of the palais de tokyo (2006-11) in paris At the end of the 1930s, H.G. Wells delivered a series of talks predicting the birth of a “World Brain.” Possibly because he was a witness to the invention of microfilm and the inauguration, in 1927, of the first telephone line, linking New York to London, the British science-fiction writer thought that advances in communications and information storage would give rise to a worldwide encyclopedia. It would be accessible to all and, he hoped, serve as the basis for a collective intelligence such as would end war among men. In the 1960s, Arthur C. Clarke, cowriter of the screenplay for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and witness…