Create an Account
username: password:
 
  MemeStreams Logo

MemeStreams Discussion

search


This page contains all of the posts and discussion on MemeStreams referencing the following web page: As We May Think | Vannevar Bush | July 1945 | The Atlantic. You can find discussions on MemeStreams as you surf the web, even if you aren't a MemeStreams member, using the Threads Bookmarklet.

As We May Think | Vannevar Bush | July 1945 | The Atlantic
by noteworthy at 10:07 pm EST, Nov 5, 2007

A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

... All this is conventional, except for the projection forward of present-day mechanisms and gadgetry. It affords an immediate step, however, to associative indexing, the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another. This is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing.

There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record.

Presumably man’s spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems. He has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his records more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion and not merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited memory. His excursions may be more enjoyable if he can reacquire the privilege of forgetting the manifold things he does not need to have immediately at hand, with some assurance that he can find them again if they prove important.

This essay is the nexus of the Internet galaxy. It has been recommended and referenced before, along with Bush's other ideas, but I recommend it again now because it has just been republished in The American Idea. The version linked here is an abbreviated form; the full version is also available.


 
 
Powered By Industrial Memetics