The Vannevar Bush article “As We May Think” written in 1945 discusses the potentialities of future technological advancement. Many of what he discusses was beyond the limits of my vocabulary and thus I could not adequately engage whether or not he accurately predicted what the future would hold. That said, the most substantial part of the article in my opinion was the proposing of a machine known as the ‘memex’, which would harbor countless amount of information, which he called a “mechanized private file and library”. This is particularly fascinating because this seems to be the framework for the modern computer. He discusses how this machine will track the progression of inquiry that one is addressing and allow others to access this trace as well. This is, in very rudimentary terms, a very accurate description of what google offers the world, in which one can search for any number of issues one has and can access both large texts discussing it and individual articles and forums in which the issue is being discussed. While I doubt Bush would have comprehended the extent to which the systematic organization of information would evolve, his accessing of this topic certainly leads one to believe that he was as accurate in his predictions as he could have been for the time in which the article was written.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Vannevar Bush article “As We May Think” written in 1945 discusses the potentialities of future technological advancement. Many of what he discusses was beyond the limits of my vocabulary and thus I could not adequately engage whether or not Continue reading