As We May Think

The Atlantic article As We May Think, written by Vannevar Bush in 1945 chronicles the future of electronic technology. Bush emphasizes the importance of moving scientific efforts from warfare technology to electronic technology. He believes this is the future of society and he calculates many inventions that he foresees will help society be more efficient and resourceful. These cutting-edge ideas were probably not easily comprehensible to the society of the 1940's, but many of his predictions were eerily accurate and have come to pass in today's society.

He begins the article by describing past inventions out of which current inventions have evolved. He illustrates Leibnitz's invention of a calculating machine, which essentially embodies the keyboards of today. Bush believes that this invention helped lead to the development of the typewriter. I think this is partly how he comes up with his predicted inventions of the future. Some of these future inventions include the digital camera, the computer, the Internet, and voice recognition machines.

He describes an invention called "memex." The "memex" stores information--private files, books, records and communications--in the system. He explains that the information will be easily accessible and quickly obtainable. He also discusses how the data will be view on a projector-like screen and how the information will be accessed via a keyboard. It's unbelievable to conceive that Bush's idea of the "memex" so closely resembles the modern day computer.

Another interesting prediction Bush discusses is the linking of related ideas. He explains that an idea can be started from a main trail, then comments and other related ideas can be linked to the main trail idea to create a web of similar materials. This seems to foreshadow the emergence of the World Wide Web.

I would assume that many scholars and scientists of the time marveled at this article and I would presume that Bush continued to research and theorize about the future of electronic technology. I would be interested to know if he lived long enough to witness any of his predictions coming to fruition.