If nothing else, this assignment has taught me that I cannot be a computer engineer, or any type of engineer for that matter, as the two Vannevar Bush articles and the synopsis of the "Bush Symposium" were absolutely mind-numbing for me, and I have no idea how I am sitting here alive to talk about them.
Aaaaaanyway, besides that, I think it is interesting to see the ways that As We May Think and the concept of the memex have been so influential in regards to modern computer technology. The marginal notes put it so nicely in part of the "Memex revisited" article: "This is just search" (in reference to the concept of the memex indexing the documents stored within it). I had similar thoughts throughout the entire article (where I actually understood what was being said, at least,) in that I also saw tons of ideas that have been adapted to today's technologies, such as "trails" (hyperlinks) and a "new encyclopedia" (Wikipedia). He even foresaw the enticing nature of smaller technology that is reflected in today's smartphone and tablet market, and predicted the path from the large, university-used computers to personal computers. As the "Symposium" article notes, it is more probable is that we are following Bush's example rather than building things that just so happen to resemble Bush's ideas, but the fact that these wild predictions have pretty much come to fruition in today's technologies is still remarkable.
In my Google searching, which can coincidentally also be traced as a Bush-inspired action, I found some interesting results on the first page. First of all, memex.com is not even Bush-related, and is owned by some sort of security company. This must be disappointing to Berners-Lee today, who would probably want that site on his own invention to be in homage to one of the first conceptualizations of his work. There's also a Canadian machine company named "Memex," which also has nothing to do with Bush or his ideas. Second, there is actually an animation on YouTube of a theoretical memex working as it is laid out by Bush, which shows the amount of reverence internet users still have to Bush's concept, even 70 years later. My third most interesting finding was that Microsoft actually has a page dedicated to the Memex on its "Microsoft Research" site, which shows that even the biggest players in the software game right now are indebted to Bush's ideas. Overall, these results and the other ones not mentioned here show just how powerful Bush's ideas were, even to the internet community we have today.
2 comments:
I find it really interesting that Microsoft gave the Memex that kind of acknowledgement. You wouldn't expect such a large corporation to do something like that.
Besides that, it doesn't seem too surprising that the Memex name is being used in other ways today. It is kind of a catchy name. In addition, the idea of the Memex is pretty unknown in mainstream culture.
And I found the articles confusing too.
As someone else who isn't particularly advanced in their understanding of technology, I can completely relate to not being able to understand everything in the article. My search of Google also gave me a lot of pictures and animations that aided my understanding of the Memex. It was very interesting to see how many articles are available on the subject too, especially the fact that Microsoft has an entire page dedicated to the Memex. It's kind of cool how they give it the acknowledgement that it seems to deserve.
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