As We May Think

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As We May Think

• Vannevar BushJuly 1945

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Where we are so far
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Where we are so far
Television
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Where we are so far
Camera
Micro cam
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Where we are so far
Telephone
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Where we are so far
Wax cylinder
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Where we are so far
Stenotype
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Where we are so far
Voder
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Where we are so far
Vocoder
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• Of what lasting benefit has been mans use of
  science and of the new instruments which his
  research brought into existence?

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The Blessing and the Curse
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 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.

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The Solution
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.

• 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.

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The Process
The World has arrived at an age of cheap complex
devices of great reliability and something is
bound to come of it.

• 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.

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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
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The Reality54 years later
Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental
process artificially, but he certainly ought to
be able to learn from it.

• We have Memex interconnectivity (and the
  internet!)
• We have portable Memexes.
• We are automating what Bush called the creative
  aspect of thinkingthe 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.

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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.