i202 Fall 2009 School of Information, UC Berkeley

Coding Horror, one of my favorite blogs, has an article on Xanadu, a vaporware software project envisoned by Ted Nelson in 1963 and still not quite in beta.

Xanadu was meant to be a universal library, a worldwide hypertext publishing tool, a system to resolve copyright disputes, and a meritocratic forum for discussion and debate. By putting all information within reach of all people, Xanadu was meant to eliminate scientific ignorance and cure political misunderstandings. And, on the very hackerish assumption that global catastrophes are caused by ignorance, stupidity, and communication failures, Xanadu was supposed to save the world.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001303.html

It's worth noting how different 202 would be (not to mention every other I School class) if something like this had caught on, and how comically infeasible a system like this is on a large scale.