Hyperdocumentation: what are the limits for documenting processes and practices @asist_ec #ist23

This is a catchup blog post from the Information Science Trends conference which took place in Uppsala, Sweden and online 20-21 June 2023. The final keynote was from Olivier Le Deuff on Hyperdocumentation: what are the limits for documenting processes and practices? I was chairing the session, which is why I couldn't liveblog it (see photo, talen by Isto Huvila), but these are mostly notes that I took during the talk, so as usual, apologies for any false interpretations. A slogan I would lift from this talk is  "Documentation is not dead".

Le Deuff talked about the Belgian bibliographer Paul Otlet, and in particular his concept of hyperdocumentation. Le Deuff has written a book about this. Paul Otlet (1868-1944) started as a lawyer, but found his strengths as a bibliography and went on to (amongst other things) create the Mundaneum ("a google of paper") which housed the index-card based attempt to document the knowledge of the world (finally comprising 15 million index cards). Otlet was also a pacifist, imagining a world of peace.
For Otlet there are 5 stages to hyperdocumentation. (1) Man sees the reality of the universe (2) man reasons about reality and interprets it (3) introduces the document (4) creates scientific instruments (5) connects instrument and document (a fusion). Then there is the ultimate stage where there is a recording instrumentation established for each sense - with documents able to encode and transmit sound, the visual, taste, fragrance and touch. "Hyper" (in hyperdocumentation) means several things: massification; extension (or augmentation); reduction (to better categorise and understand); document diversity; new methods (thinking about machines that could enable hyperdocumentation) and hyper-document.
Otlet connected this work with his pacifism, contrasting hyperdocumentationn (connecting humans) with hyperseperatism. Le Deuff presented a quotation from Otlet's Monde, which envisaged a future where everything is documented as it happens and man could see everything as it happened (together with past knowledge) so that "everyone in his chair could contemplate creation". Le Deuff felt that this was more than "the internet". The cosmographe is the instrument that records everything and the cosmoscope is what gives you access to everything. Le Deuff said that the idea of a "second brain", posited as being a result of AI, can also be seen as Otlet's dream. This vision included interlinking of the smallest and largest elements, and a process of categorising and organising the information. It was an interconnection covering all aspects of civic life. Thus another project was the world city - a "colossal book".
Le Deuff also thought Otlet could be seen as a transhumanist, with humans modified or augmented to improve their capacities for reasoning. Otlet envisioned being able to change the world and regulate society for good through this process. This included the idea of the fluid metahuman. 

To supplement my account, there is the HyperOtlet project (mostly in French) and a useful article in English is:
Le Deuff, O. & Perret, A. (2019). Paul Otlet and the Ultimate Prospect of Documentation, Proceedings from the Document Academy, 6(1), Article 14. https://doi.org/10.35492/docam/6/1/9