The Memex

Vannevar Bush had a jaw-dropping amount of foresight when he described the course of science's compression and cataloging of human knowledge.

His 'Memex' is a prophetic description of the modern-day desktop computer--a device that calls compacted pages of information from sharable micro-libraries.  More astounding--Bush predicted, in 1940s terminology and practical application, a system of sharing and linking information comparable to our modern-day internet.  He even described a search-engine/wikipedia-style of navigating and building on the 'web' of information in which the pages of microfilm could be explored based on trails of relevance and even 'bookmarked'.

In fact, Bush basically describes all of the elements of a modern-day website, right down to the 'back to top' button and the ability to leave comments for others to reference.

The article also predicts the wide-spread use of the barcode, the scanner/printer, voice recognition, and a microfilm version of the digital camera.  He even predicted things that are recently accomplished by current research, but look to be imminent to widespread use, such as the interfacing of the brain's electrical signals to command machines.  The man was truly a visionary, whether his contemporaries could see it or not.  I would be interested to see responses from his colleagues to his optimistic speculation on the course science would lead us in.

This article is important--it provides thrilling insight to how science can make what seems like the material of fantasies into reality, with a little imagination and time.  After reading it, i'm full of speculations about future possibilities in the electronic world of knowledge.  Now that we have our endless library, we have to learn to navigate it and consume it more effectively.  Could search engines develop to instantly construct reliable, specifically taylored chunks of information to the exact thing we're thinking of learning?  And could we one day develop the ability to take information directly from computers into our brains, navigating and swimming through information effortlessly?  The possibilities seem endless now, looking at the leap technology has taken since Bush's day.