Vannevar Bush (1890–1974)

Originally appeared in the Atlantic magazine in July 1945

This article is widely credited as the precursor of the Web[1]. In it that appeared as War World II was winding down, Vannevar Bush proposes the memex device as a tool to extend the power of the brain. He begins by laying the groundwork for recent scientific breakthroughs that sound antiquated to a 21st civilian. Several of them, such as dry photography, are completely irrelevant as technology has passed them by. Although, Vannevar Bush spends quite some time going into the technical details of these future technologies, he is ultimately more focused on the bigger picture of what these make possible in way of the memex device -- a self-contained desk with multiple ways of collecting, storing and accessing information.

The Web has come to replace the need for us each to have our own computing device. However, there are a few concepts which I think we've lost along the way. These include the idea of trails through the information and the ability to comment on links. Both Bush and Berners-Lee, the founder of the world wide web, consider the ability to add information to the system to be far more important than simply digesting it. The Web has come some ways towards being a 2-way medium. Yet, there is no mechanism that allows users to easily create, annotate and share trails through the data. Fortunately, the web is still young and is undergoing rapid evolution as individuals, families, groups, businesses and governments come to rely on it for everyday purposes.

[1] http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/2/1/000015/000015.html… (altro)