The Memex was the name of a hypothetical proto-hypertext system that Vannevar Bush described in "As We May Think." The Memex machine didn't necessarily come to fruition but the actual idea behind it influenced the development of many early hypertext systems. I watched a YouTube video made in 2009 titled 'Memex Animation: Vannevar Bush's diagram made real'. It was an animation that showed what the memex would've accomplished and could have done if it became a reality. Bush's ideas influenced Tim Berners-Lee in envisioning and eventually leading to the development of the World Wide Web. Bush basically thought up the idea of a computer.
When looking Memex up on Google, the first things that popped up were two Wikipedia articles, one on Vannevar Bush and the other on The Memex. Right below that was a video on YouTube that I watched. I also found informative articles on Bush's Memex idea and a page for Weblogs someone has been writing on the Memex.
Today, if the Memex existed, I feel like it would be uncomfortable and hard to use. We would eventually get used to but it would be difficult. I also think it would be very confusing to use. The most important thing to gather from Bush's Memex is that it was an innovative idea ahead of its time and made way for other people to expand on his vision. Basically what Bush envisioned was a computer at a desk. Bush envisioned the memex as a device in which individuals would compress and store all of their books, records, and communications, "mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility."
1 comment:
You did a great way of demonstrating how the research was for the Memex. What I liked most about your post is how you said the Memex would be so complicated to use today. I believe that is very true. I was looking at the Memex in such a revolutionary way, as you said "ahead of it's time" but if it actually was developed exactly as Bush imagined it, it would not be at user friendly as compared to other devices we had today, which is ironic because that was Bush's main purpose. While the Memex was an incredible idea in it's time, we have learned to use hypertext in much more efficient ways, and it certainly did not start like the Memex, but rather the World Wide Web.
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