Searching the Memex

It was interesting to see the similarities between the Memex that Bush envisioned and the technologies that exist today. Many of Bush’s goals when developing the Memex blueprint were similar to the goals of our present technology. The article noted that, “Bush calls for a new relationship between the thinking man and the sum of our knowledge.” His ideas were very similar to the goals of other developers, especially Tim Bernes-Lee, the developer of the World Wide Web, who also hoped to create a more universal source of information for man to discover and go through.

When searching the Memex on Google, I found many other descriptions on the make up of the Memex and the similarities to many modern day technologies. A YouTube video I found called, Memex Animation- Vannevar Bush’s diagrams made real, was helpful in giving a more in depth look at the way the Memex was imagined to work. It also helped to show how similar it was to the computer and hypertext technology.

In an article online I found an interesting difference between todays technologies, especially the computer and the Memex. While there was a way to view ones history and path for the Memex, the article online notes how people often have difficulty recalling how they found certain articles or pieces of information due to the use of hypertext technology that Bush envisioned. It also notes the unimportance of the “trail” to individuals today. Rather than having a focus of knowing the thought process and sharing it with others, today people only are focused on sharing the end result of their search. Overall, although the Memex has some very different aspects of technology today, the similarities showed the need for new ways to organize and gather information from an early day in age.