Vannevar Bush's essay "As We May Think", first published in Atlantic Monthly in July1945, argued that as humans turned from war, scientific efforts should shift from increasing physical abilities to making all previous collected humanknowledge more accessible.
His article described something in many ways like today's World Wide Web (in fact, he had features still not elegantly available).
... 24, 1864. On May 10, 1873, at his request, he was permitted to travel to Molokai to help the lepers who had virtually nothing to keep them warm or fed. After twelve years ...