As We May Think Vannevar Bush—July 1945

Where we are so far…

Television

Where we are so far… CameraMicro cam

Where we are so far… Telephone

Where we are so far… Wax cylinder

Where we are so far… Stenotype

Where we are so far… Voder

Where we are so far… Vocoder

“Of what lasting benefit has been man’s use of science and of the new instruments which his research brought into existence?”

The Blessing and the Curse The amount of data available far exceeds the time one could devote to it. The expanse of this knowledge is growing faster than it can be digested. “Science has provided the swiftest communication between individuals; it has provided a record of ideas and has enabled man to manipulate and to make extracts from that record so that knowledge evolves and endures throughout the life of a race rather than that of an individual.”

The Solution Any process that can be reduced to a repetitive task, can be performed by a machine. With machines, accessing the vast stores of scientific data can be achieved with current indexing methods. “Selection by association, rather than indexing, may yet be mechanized.” “There may be millions of fine thoughts, and the account of the experience on which they are based, all encased within stone walls of acceptable architectural form; but if the scholar can get at only one a week by diligent search, his syntheses are not likely to keep up with the current scene. ”

The Process Current technology can be explored to build computational machines. “The … machines of the future will be electrical in nature, and they will perform at 100 times present speeds, or more.” “The World has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.”

The Product “Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library … 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.” The Memex

The Reality—54 years later We have Memex interconnectivity (and the internet!) We have portable Memexes. We are automating what Bush called the creative aspect of thinking—“the selection of the data and the process to be employed”. We are largely beyond anything Bush ever hoped for, but there is still a long way to go. “Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental process artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it.”

“Man 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.”