When posts turn more than a year old, the LessWrong community reviews and votes on how well they have stood the test of time.

MUNDANEUM

Monde est tout notre objet,

Universelle notre tendance,

Nous voulons : croire au progrès, à l'intelligence,

Désarmer les bras, les cœurs, les mentalités,

À travers tout l'espace, à travers tous les temps.

Nation, homme, société, la divinité

Est à l'ouest, nord aux extrémités,

Unir, organiser, par excellence

Monde, qui est bien notre objet.

Making the world our whole objective,

Universal is our tendency,

Now we want: to believe in progress, in intelligence,

Disarm arms, hearts, and mindsets,

Across all space, across all time.

Nation, man, society, divinity

Extending west, north to the extremities,

Unite, organize, par excellence

Making the world truly our objective.

The Origins of the Internet and the Quest for Knowledge

Attributing the creation of the internet to a single individual is complex, as numerous key figures contributed throughout modern computing history:

• Leonard Kleinrock led the team at UCLA and Stanford that built the earliest computer network and transmitted the first online message in 1969.

• Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and created the world's very first website in 1990.

• Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, widely acknowledged as the fathers of the internet, developed TCP/IP in 1973—the foundational set of networking protocols allowing interconnected computers to communicate.

• Larry Roberts connected two computers for the first time in 1965.

• Donald Davies invented packet switching in 1965, enabling efficient digital communications.

• Abhay Bhushan created the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) in 1971.

• Bob Metcalfe, alongside David Boggs, co-invented Ethernet networking technology in 1980.

While these engineers built the technological backbone of the digital age, internet pioneer Vint Cerf noted that the core conceptual idea of a globally accessible information network was actually born in Belgium.

The Mundaneum: A 100-Year-Old Information Engine

In the early 20th century, two Belgian visionaries envisioned a centralized index to compile, cross-reference, and preserve the entirety of human knowledge:

• Paul Otlet: A Belgian lawyer, author, and documentation scientist.

• Henri La Fontaine: Otlet's close collaborator, a legal scholar and politician who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1913.

Together, they founded an ambitious collaborative endeavor known as The Mundaneum (also documented with its symbolic Latin emblem deciphered as "Monde est tout notre objet, universelle notre tendance"). Their goal was to construct what was effectively a paper-based predecessor to Wikipedia.

Because electronic computers and network servers did not exist in 1910, Otlet and La Fontaine built a physical database consisting of 12 million index cards housed within massive wooden catalog drawers. Each card contained meticulously organized entries on distinct subjects contributed by experts across the globe.

Expansion at the Palais du Cinquantenaire

To accommodate this burgeoning repository, the Belgian government granted Otlet and La Fontaine an entire wing of the Palais du Cinquantenaire in Brussels in 1914. Following World War I, the Mundaneum rapidly grew into an expansive center occupying over 100 rooms. Beyond index cards, it housed vast collections of books, newspapers, journals, posters, and multimedia items.

To organize this colossal library, Otlet and La Fontaine created the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) system. Adapted from the Dewey Decimal System to be internationally adaptable, the UDC categorized knowledge into structured thematic branches—including history, geography, science, mathematics, and specialized adult literature—and remains widely used by librarians worldwide today.

When opened to the public in 1920, the Mundaneum attracted broad crowds of everyday citizens eager to explore its vast collection, operating as a functional open-access information hub.

Prophetic Vision of Modern Technology

Despite early success, the project faced administrative opposition. In 1924, the Belgian government cleared out half of the Mundaneum’s rooms in the Palais du Cinquantenaire to hold a commercial trade fair for the Belgian rubber industry ("Cinquième Foire Commerciale de Bruxelles").

Compelled to condense their archives into a smaller space, Otlet turned his attention toward conceptualizing electronic information storage. In his 1934 treatise, Le Livre sur le Livre ("The Book on the Book"), Otlet described a remarkably accurate vision of the modern workstation and cloud computing architecture:

He predicted that a worker's desk would no longer require physical books, featuring instead a visual display screen and a telephone. Remote central repositories housed in large dedicated facilities would hold all texts and data, distributing them to users across wired or wireless channels. Queries typed or spoken into the system would display retrieved pages on screen, complete with audio output from loudspeakers for media requiring sound.

In a single passage, Otlet foresaw modern technologies including server farms, the World Wide Web, online search engines, video streaming platforms, and wireless networks (Wi-Fi). While other authors had discussed similar concepts—such as Mark Twain's 1898 description of a futuristic communication device termed the "telelectroscope"—Otlet was among the first to outline a comprehensive, systematic architecture for a global web of information.

Closure, Destruction, and Historical Legacy

In 1934, the Belgian government withdrew funding and evicted the Mundaneum from the Palais du Cinquantenaire. The physical filing cabinets remained stored inside the building while the founders sought new premises.

Tragedy struck in 1941 during World War II when occupying Nazi forces invaded Brussels, seized the building, and destroyed a substantial portion of the index cards and archives to make space for an exhibition of Third Reich art.

Henri La Fontaine passed away in 1943, and Paul Otlet died a year later in 1944. Though their groundbreaking work faded into relative obscurity as modern electronic computing emerged in the decades that followed, their visionary principles remain fundamental to how information is organized on the modern internet.

Visiting the Mundaneum Museum Today

The surviving portions of the Mundaneum's grand filing system are preserved and exhibited at the Mundaneum Museum, housed within a converted former department store in central Mons, Belgium.

Analysis of the tech industry,exploring the intersection of technology, culture, and innovation.

Artificial intelligence has reached near-saturation in software engineering, with over 90% of developers and companies integrating AI tools into their workflows. The adoption is largely fueled by significant productivity gains, improved code quality, and streamlined development processes—AI support ranges from automated code generation to bug fixes and architectural recommendations. However, mass adoption exposes persistent industry-wide challenges, including data privacy and security concerns, unclear returns on investment, integration complexity with legacy systems, and a notable shortage of in-house AI expertise.

Despite daily reliance on AI, trust in automated output remains stubbornly low among developers, who prefer using AI as an assistive resource rather than replacing human judgment. Ethical questions and fears of diminished critical thinking, particularly among junior engineers, add to organizational hesitancy. Entry-level roles are impacted as tech workforce trends show shrinking demand, with job postings for new graduates sharply down since 2022. To manage these challenges, leading firms have crafted frameworks focused on communication, feedback, and cultural readiness. As software engineering moves toward full AI integration, success will increasingly depend on balancing rapid innovation with governance, transparency, and the growth of human expertise

2T0C IGZO-based DRAM opens doors to high-density 3D DRAM and embedded DRAM

IMEC's new capacitor-less IGZO-DRAM technology is a potential disruptor to the traditional DRAM roadmap, offering a solution to the scaling limitations of conventional 1T1C DRAM bit cells. This new approach uses two thin-film transistors (2T) made of indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (IGZO) and no capacitor (0C).

​Key advantages of the IGZO-DRAM technology include:

​Improved Power Efficiency and Data Retention: IGZO transistors have an extremely low off-current, which significantly reduces the need for frequent refreshing. This leads to a substantial decrease in power consumption, addressing one of the major challenges of scaling traditional DRAM.

​Enhanced Manufacturability and Cost-Effectiveness: Unlike silicon, IGZO can be processed at lower temperatures, making it compatible with existing back-end-of-line (BEOL) processes. This simplified manufacturing process could potentially lower production costs.

​Enabling Advanced Architectures: The capacitor-less design allows for more compact bit cells, which in turn enables new, higher-density DRAM architectures. This includes stacking the memory array on top of the periphery logic and "true 3D" stacking, which could lead to a significant increase in memory density.

​Addressing Reliability Concerns: While reliability issues, such as positive bias temperature instability (PBTI), have been a concern for the industry, IMEC has made significant progress in understanding and modeling these effects to ensure the reliability of their IGZO-based transistors.

Unlike traditional spatial crystals such as diamonds, where atoms form repeating patterns in three-dimensional space, time crystals exhibit periodic motion in the temporal dimension.

By stacking multiple time crystal layers, engineers could potentially create unprecedented data storage systems that encode information in both spatial and temporal domains.

Why Silicon Valley’s heartless, baseless, and foolish obsessions—with escaping death, building AI tyrants, and creating limitless growth—are about oligarchic power, not preparing for the future

Tech billionaires have decided that they should determine our futures for us. According to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, and more, the only good future for humanity is one powered by technology: trillions of humans living in space, functionally immortal, served by superintelligent AIs.

Hundred Rabbits is an artist collective that documents low-tech solutions with the hope of building a more resilient future. We live and work aboard a 10 m sailboat named Pino in remote parts of the world to learn more about how technology degrades beyond the shores of the western world.

Over the past decade, the software engineering industry experienced an unprecedented period of prosperity and privilege, characterized by lavish perks, generous compensation, and near-guaranteed job security. This era was fundamentally driven by an economic environment of near-zero interest rates that allowed companies to operate with unlimited access to cheap capital. During this time, profitability was secondary to growth metrics, user acquisition, and company valuation, leading organizations to compete aggressively for engineering talent through extensive benefits and high salaries.

The landscape has dramatically shifted since 2023, with interest rates rising to approximately 5%, fundamentally altering corporate incentives. Companies now prioritize profitability and efficiency over unchecked growth, leading to a wave of layoffs and a cultural transformation in how engineers are valued and treated. What was once considered essential—open-source contributions, developer experience initiatives, and experimental projects—is now being defunded in favor of focused execution on core business priorities.

This transformation represents more than just economic adjustment; it's a fundamental realignment between company interests and individual engineer interests. The previous decade created an illusion where companies appeared to share engineers' values and priorities, but this was largely a mirage created by abundant capital and the need to attract talent. The current reality is that companies are now driven by executive leadership's specific strategic objectives rather than broad engineering enthusiasm.

Engineers face difficult choices in this new environment. Those who continue pursuing projects or values misaligned with company priorities risk being perceived as ineffective or unreliable, making them vulnerable to layoffs. The shift requires engineers to either adapt to the new reality or accept potential career consequences. While this transition has been painful and represents a loss of privilege, it also brings a certain clarity and authenticity to the profession. The relationship between engineers and companies has returned to a more straightforward dynamic: value creation leads to rewards, while lack of value leads to consequences.

The fundamental truth emerging from this shift is that software engineering, like any profession, operates on clear economic principles. Success now depends on understanding and aligning with company objectives rather than expecting companies to accommodate individual preferences. This realignment, while challenging, may ultimately lead to a more sustainable and realistic industry where both companies and engineers operate with clearer expectations and mutual understanding.