As We May Think: Vannevar Bush

“On top [of the desk] 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.”

This comment in Vannevar Bush’s “As We May Think” instantly made me question the authenticity of this essay. His visions were almost dead on, which is mind-boggling to me that someone actually thought of this system or “memex” in 1945.

His vision of a system that held information that could be related to another by association with added analysis is basically today’s Wikipedia. Bush pointed out that humans' brains relate information by association not by indexing. This led him to propose a system that allowed researchers to join together two sources for future reference. At the time, Bush argued there was so much knowledge and information to sort through, that only people who were interested in specific areas and that had the dedication to research, could uncover new findings or thoroughly understand one subject. It amazes me how the amount of research in the 40’s has continually increased even with the invention of the internet and Wikipedia or other online encyclopedias. Although we have technology to increase our capacity to record knowledge, there is still so much information out in the world - and internet- that is almost missing because our system of searching items on the internet is ever changing.

This leads me to another point that Bush made. He stated, “Truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential.” I understand where he’s coming from with regards to the time period, but I can’t help but to think of present day. There is so much “information” or “data” that is insignificant and yet still percolating the internet. Even if you only look at Wikipedia, there is a lot of “useless” information that relates to pop culture that won’t benefit humans as a whole. At least this information would be useless in Bush’s eye, however, this type of information is relevant to people dealing in arts and entertainment areas.

As an artist interested in technology and people, the internet cannot become a one source environment that excludes less relevant information; Information that deals with transforming industries such as music and art in culture. If Bush were alive today I think he would qualify culture as another asset to the “memmex.”

His book idea seams like it’s still in progress. We can purchase electronic books that will be similar to what he was explaining, but I think his vision was that this information would be free. And all books would be included, which is not the case in present day, however, more books are added to ebooks all the time.

Last I'd like to talk about another quote. Bush wrote “...yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bride between disciplines is correspondingly superficial.” It is interesting how necessary specialization is and has been in the past, but it seams that society is moving towards more rounded people that are able to intertwine different disciplines with success. This quote was most likely accurate in Bush's lifetime, but as technology improves so does our ability to adapt our brains to comprehend multiple areas of study effectively.