As We May Think By Vannevar Bush July 1945 Presented by Steve Hookway 9/6/05

Too Much Information Then “..there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends” “publication has extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record” Now In July 2000 more than 2 billion pages[1] 4 billion estimated in 2001[1] In 2002 over 9,040,000 Web Sites[2] 1.Sizing the Internet, Cyveillance White Paper Prepared by Brian H. Murray, Cyveillance, Inc. 2.OCLC: Online Computer Library Center

Creating a Record: Photography Then Faster, dry development Smaller cameras Reduce the size of the image without loss of quality - microfilm Now Polaroid Cameras Digital Cameras Electronic imaging a vast improvement over microfilm[1,2] 1. DocFinity: 2. Captiva:

Creating a Record: Written Then Synthesize speech – Voder Record speech – Vocoder, Stenotype Early voice recognition Early character recognition - adding Now Voice and Text Recognition Software[1] Philips 9450 VC Pocket Memo[2] 1.ART: Speech and Handwriting Interfaces for Mobil DevicesSpeech and Handwriting Interfaces for Mobil Devices 2.Phillips: 9450 VC Pocket Memo9450 VC Pocket Memo

Advanced Mathematics Then Some machines to solve differential and integral equations Predicted a machine able to reason with mathematical data Now Handheld calculators to solve differential and integral equations IBM’s Blue Gene/Lite capable of 360 teraflops – trillions of calculations per second used to study interactions between atmospheric chemistry and pollution[1] 1. Blue Gene/LBlue Gene/L

Information Selection Then Simple Selection (Card Reader) Examines each piece in turn Problems indexing Now Existing web search techniques Content/Link analysis

Information Selection Then Conventional Indexing is Inconvenient The Memex Large Storage Easy retrieval Now Conventional Indexing Made Easier The Personal PC Dell’s Base Model comes with an 80GB hard drive [1] 1. Dell: Dimension DesktopsDimension Desktops

Associative Indexing Then Memex documents linked via code word and photocell dots Memex links are easily created and traversed Now HTML anchors link web content together Able to navigate forwards and backwards through links (with help of crawler)

Beyond the Memex Then Information observed/recorded via senses (mechanical) Now Able to convert thought to mechanical output [1] Not so far off from being able to observe, record, and access information simply by thinking about it 1. Monkey controls robotic arm using brain signals sent over the Internet: Elizabeth A. Thomson, News Office December 6, 2000Monkey controls robotic arm using brain signals sent over the Internet: Elizabeth A. Thomson, News Office December 6, 2000