Vannevar Bush
Abstract
     Vannevar Bush was an American Engineer, known for the development of the atomic bomb and the idea of the "memex". The memex was first mentioned in Bush's essay "As We May Think" printed in The Atlantic Monthly. The ideas of the memex are considered the beginnings of the world wide web which influenced the inventor of hyper text Ted Nelson. Though his ideas caused a large change in communication and access of information, he never lived to see his ideas realized.
Background
  • Identified problem: Technology (even 1940’s technology) had increased production speed, transmission speed and permanence of stored info. Information overload.
  • Main concern: people were increasingly unable to search effectively.
  • Spend lot of time looking for relevant info
  • Can’t retrieve info readily, even after we’ve looked at it before (scientific journals: “Where did I see that?”)
    Filing system was cumbersome
Description
The MEMEX "memory extendor"
  • “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.”
  • “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”

The Memex Main functions:
  • Production: Hoped to use voice recognition and mechanized data entry/control (punch cards, film)
  • Storage system: microfilm duplicates (low cost, huge storage)
  • Retrieval/Analysis: Wants to be able to retrieve information based on rules and delegate complicated,
    redundant processing to computers.
Analysis
    Importance:
  • Selection by association (rather than subject) as means of searching information
  • “Trail” of search (think history, weblog, or html page) could then be forwarded to another user... reliance on others as “trailblazers” to help build associations between documents.
  • Info easily relocated later

These idea heavily influenced the creation of the hypertext, world wide web, and internet. These can even be said to be the ideas of the first personal computer.
Conclusions
Are we there yet?
  • “If the user wishes to consult a certain book, he taps its code on the keyboard, and the title page of the book promptly appears before him”(find/ search)
  • “On deflecting one of these levers to the right he runs through the book before him, each page in turn being projected at a speed which just allows a recognizing glance at each.” (scrolling)
  • “he can leave one item in position while he calls up another. He can add marginal notes and comments... just as though he had the physical page before him.” (tablet pc's)
  • “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. (scanner)”
  • Storage capacity: “if the user inserted 5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill the repository”. 1 page is about 8kb, 5000 pages are about 40 megs; 200 years would be about 8 gigs.

YES!
References

Montfort, Nick and Noah Wardrip-fruin, 2003. The New Media Reader.
Camerbridge, Massachusetts, The MIT Press.

Memex. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex (accessed May 5, 2006).

Internet Pioneers: Vannevar Bush. http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/bush.html (accessed May 8, 2006).