AS WE MAY THINK
A response by Taneim Miah
“As We May Think” is an article by Vannevar Bush from 1945, that is about technology, moving forward from World War 2. The article begins with a talk about how the war has impacted everybody, and how scientists, who’ve worked hard towards a common cause, must now find a new goal to pursue. Specifically, physicists and engineers, who’ve worked on various devices to aid the war efforts, must find a new objective. Bush talks about the growth of technology, as well as the growth of scientific knowledge. As knowledge has been growing exponentially, there needs to be some sort of technology that can store such knowledge and make it more accessible. As I read through this article, I realized that Bush was correctly predicting the future and how technology would evolve to help society.
“Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library... A memex is 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. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.” - Bush, 1945
Instant Photography & Videography
Digital Transcribers
Advanced Computing Machines
Associative Indexing
After reading through the article, I was incredibly impressed at how Bush was able to predict many of the “future” technologies that would be made. It makes sense though, as Bush described necessities and problems that needed to be solved and how the invention of certain technologies would make that reality true. I believe that Bush was correct in pushing towards this future, especially after the war efforts. It was incredibly important for the world to gain a unified knowledge repository in the form of associative indexing and memex. The way Bush described memex is essentially how computers and the current internet work, as it stores lots of data and can be indexed via search engines.
Bush makes the point that “man's spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems.” I completely agree with this idea, and think that it’s important to keep in mind, moving forward to the future. It is always important to have an encyclopedia or a memex of previous knowldege and events so that humanity can progress forward.