Document – book – semantic web: Old science documentation`s contribution

The key focus of the research is the contribution of the founder of the documentation science, Paul Otlet, to the evolution of communication technologies and media. Methods used: systematic-mediological approach to research in book studies, documentology, information and communication sciences, retrospective discourse analysis of documents, studies, monographs. The way in which Otlet presents arguments about the document “book” as the base technology of the universal documentation global network is reviewed chronologically. His critical thinking has been established: by expanding the definition of a “book”, he projects its future transformation in descending order - from The Universal Book of Knowledge (Le Livre universel de la Science) through the “thinking machine” (machine à penser), to its breakdown to Biblions, the smallest building blocks of written knowledge. It is proven that Otlet laid down the foundations of the concept of hyper-documentation and multi-sensor interface, by predicting the emergence of “sensory perceptible documents” and formulating the “sensory specification of documents”. Paul Otlet’s contribution to designing the “Internet” and the “Semantic Web” was discovered in his proposals from 1908 and 1934 for connecting a reading-room, a telephone and a TV set, and for remote servicing of customers by real librarians and bibliographers who work with classified and catalogued “ontology”.