Bush 1945: As We May Think

Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think", Atlantic Monthly, July 1945.

Reflecting on the end of WWII
Great scientific achievements (Manhattan Project) have been based on collaboration rather than competition
Extolled the virtues and benefits of science, but focuses immediately on the need to preserve, organize and manipulate knowledge in order to exceed the limitations of the individual.
Specialization has led to an undesireable "bogging down" under the weight of the mass of knowledge produced by others.
Suggests that most scientists didn't have time to keep track of the most important developments in their own fields.
Managing the weight of scholarship was already a huge problem!
But hope, in "machines of great complexity" was on the horizon.

A useful record must be continuously extended, stored and consulted.
Anticipates the small, ubiquitous CCD camera and suggests it be used as an omnipresent recording device.
Suggests microfilm for portable library.

Assumes that most new knowledge will be produced by textual encoding of speech (ViaVoice and Dragon).
Combined with photography we get a time-coded multimedia record of daily activity, we have the new way of recording the production of knowledge.
Argues that most of the organization and cross-referencing of data and writing that is characteristic of the addition of new knowledge to a corpus is "repetitive process" and thus subject to automation.
Anticipates the advent of Macsyma, Mathematica and Maple.
The computer's role is to remove the load placed on us by the repetitive, mechanical task.

Assumes that formal logic is accessible to the machine and can be automated.
Thus produces machines that can automatically produce new conclusions, more of the record.
Notices immediately that the record is now so huge that the ability to consult it is gone.
The key need is to select relevant records from the vast corpus so that they are relevant to the task at hand.
Assumes that records will be necessarily indexed with something akin to a telephone number.
Describes a system for automating transactions in a store that involves connecting customer, salesman, and object to be sold with a remote inventory database the result would be coordinated so that everything remains consistent and the final result is correct (a transactional database accessed and updated by a network of remote point-of-sale terminals).

Bemoans the hierarchical, one category-fits-all style of indexing libraries. "It can be in only one place". Related things may be nowhere near each other.
Calls upon the ability to exploit association for selection. Frequently used associations are strengthened. Less frequently used are weakened.
Memex is his universal record, a personalized, ubiquitous record of all of a person's experience, recorded thoughts and communication organized so that it can be efficiently consulted. "It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory".
A wide set of tools for accessing and viewing this memory.
Establishes the cluttered desktop tool that is present in the WIMP metaphor.

Add to this an associative index. "This is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing.".
Describes a mechanical form of defining and following hyperlinks. N.B. The link is stored separately from the texts and images that are being linked.
"Trails" become sequences of such links that are recorded and named as traces of associative thought.
Anticipates branching in these trails and the importance of passing them on to friends and colleagues.
The trails represent contextualized recordings of our thought processes that can be stored, manipulated and shared.

Features of the memex: