Reflections on Vannevar Bush

Leading on from the discussion on Zurkowski I have also been looking at the famous article by Vannevar Bush – “As we may think”.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush

In 1946 Bush was the Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development in the US. Bush was concerned about the mass of information and knowledge which was increasingly been developed, he realised that there was a need to better store and disseminate this information for the common good.

There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers—conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, as they appear.

In his vision he sees the future has holding a solution, albeit based on the emerging technology of the time “photocells” – the microprocessor would not be developed for another 22 years!

Bush’s solution is basically what he calls a “Memex”

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex" will do. 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.

It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.

In one end is the stored material. The matter of bulk is well taken care of by improved microfilm. Only a small part of the interior of the memex is devoted to storage, the rest to mechanism. Yet if the user inserted 5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill the repository, so he can be profligate and enter material freely.

Most of the memex contents are purchased on microfilm ready for insertion. Books of all sorts, pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus obtained and dropped into place. Business correspondence takes the same path. And there is provision for direct entry. On the top of the memex is a transparent platen. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, all sorts of things. When one is in place, the depression of a lever causes it to be photographed onto the next blank space in a section of the memex film, dry photography being employed.

Here we have a prototype vision of the digital revolution. Bush sees the future as film-based; nerveless Bush has the foresight to predict (based on the developing technologies of the time), that access to relevant information and knowledge will play an important part of allowing science to grow and develop. One wonders, what he would think of the Web 2.0 based world which we now find ourselves only fifty years after he published these thoughts?