In your opinion, what technologies available today have been "predicted" in Vannevar Bush's article "As We May Think" 62 years ago?
2 years, 2 months ago.
21 comments so far
In my opinion Vannevar's predictions bare resemblences to many modern technologies. Memex- Vannever's idea of a machine that would be an augmentation of a persons memory has become a reality through technologies such as wikipedia were collaberative information can be stored and accessed. Other predictions such as dry printing also now exist.
Even though he did 'Predict' many technologies such as hypertext in his essay "As we may think", I think that it's important to note that Vannevar's arguments were incredibly vague, for example "cathode ray tubes rendering visible an occurrence so brief that by comparison a microsecond is a long time", while an accurate prediction, almost sounds like a description from a cheap sci-fi book. My point being that it is not particularly difficult to make predictions based on ideas and technologies which already exist. The predicition that I have just mentioned for example is merely an expansion on existing camera technologies of the time, Vannevars hypertext is merely a quicker, electronic form of indexing and his ideas on speech recognition existed in science fiction for decades.
Vannevar's "predictions" are not what i consider to be actual predictions but rather the first steps in the evolution of modern day technologies such as :
speech to text software, Artificial Intelligence, DataBase technology, search engines, hypertext linkage.
Vannevar Bush article "as we may think" predicted a huge number of technologies that are currently avaliable to the public including personal computers, the Internet, hypertext etc. Perhaps more important in my view is the relationship between man and computers invisioned by Bush. That of how commputers would agument man brain by vastly increasing his access to and ability to store information and computers ability to free man from many long repetative task's
Bush invisioned many ideas to do with computers for the future. Many materialised into a basic form, some surpassed what he thought was possible and some have still yet to be achieved in this highly advanced age we live in.
Of the predictions he made the following are a small few that we take for granted every day that Bush thought of a long time ago; expert systems, search engines, voice recognition, translators and hypertext.
A number of ‘predictions’ struck me when I read “As we may think” by Vannemar Bush. Firstly the whole idea of digital cameras and photography is referred to many times- “advanced photography which can record what is seen “, and probably the most acute forecast - “Often it would be advantageous to be able to snap the camera and to look at the picture immediately.“ Is that not digital photography in a nutshell?
Secondly, Vannemar prophesised something, which would have been, in my mind, completely unthought-of until very recently- computer dictation. The first functional computer dictation device I can find is 1997- 52 years after the essay was published. Now that’s forward thinking!
The modern calculator, the manual one, and perhaps the digital calculator in every PC/Laptop is also envisaged by Vannemar - “To perform arithmetical computation involves also subtraction, multiplication, and division, and in addition some method for temporary storage of results, removal from storage for further manipulation, and recording of final results by printing”
Computers are eluded to as well, and are imagined to have ‘enormous appetites‘- “…they will perform complex arithmetical computations at exceedingly high speeds, and they will record results in such form as to be readily available for distribution or for later further manipulation. Such machines will have enormous appetites. One of them will take instructions and data from a roomful of girls armed with simple keyboard punches, and will deliver sheets of computed results every few minutes. There will always be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things. “
Other resources and methods of information retrieval are also referred to, such as online encyclopaedias. This is what I believe Vannemar is referring to in Section 6- "Wholly new forms of encyclopaedias will appear, ready-made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified."
The modern ability of ‘bookmarking’ webpage’s is also talked about briefly in Section 7.
Bush predicted technologies such as memex, hypertext and the internet and a form of camera that has alot of features of the modern day Digital camera.In saying that i must also point out alot of the things he seemed to predicted are just a primative form of what they have become today.
Technologies available today that were predicted by Vannevar Bush such as microphotography...nearly every one of us has a camera phone / digital camera that employs this invention and the ability to use computers and science to store information with the memex so the human brain is not overloaded with information from everything it communicates with. As well as these, in his article he spoke about a speech to text transcriber...think of the benefits that this has had in the medical world with people such as Steven Hawkings using an up-dated improved version of this idea every day. Vannevar Bush's article clearly planted the seed in peoples minds for technologies like this
It is Vannevar Bush's thinking regarding why such machine/systems as his Memex should exist that attract my attention. If one reads into the lives of people like Ted Nelson (Hyper Text), Tim Berners-Lee (World Wide Web) and Doug Engelbart (the Mouse, the Arpanet) you will find they all say they were greatly inspired by Bush's visions. You could trace most electronic developments back to Bush and his followers. However Bush talked about the amplification of the human mind, this was his reasoning for the Memex. Brewster Kahle (Alexa Internet Company) says "Bush's great insight was realising that there's more value in the connections between the data than in the data itself". Bush's memex would record intimate thoughts,or "associative trails, as he called them. "The personal machine," Bush wrote in 1965, will deliver "a new form of inheritance, not merely of genes, but of intimate thought processes. The son will inherit from his father the trails his father followed as his thoughts matured, with his father's comments and criticisms along the way. The son will select those that are fruitful, exchange with his colleagues, and further refine for the next generation. No longer, when a person is old, will he forget." This would be the ultimate diary. For decades Bush's predictions were ignored by the computer priesthood (well in to the 1980s) who hardly cared about individuals who had to deal with information, people were expected to mold their behaviour to the systems demands. That priesthood came under atttack during the 1960s. The new generation of computer scientists wanted to build computers that served people not the other way around. They embraced Bush as a figure who could validate their approach and picked up on his trail. Doug Englbart openly described Bush as his patron saint. The developments that we've seen were shaped by Bush's thinking for why we should develop the Memex. The inspiration appears to be the idea that we can develop human nature to higher ideals. To this ends it appears as if scientist are trying to develop technology that will record a persons complete existance,(Everything seen (Digital Cameras), heard (Digital Recording Devices), thought (Digital Recording of Neuron Activity in the brain) etc...). "For what reason do we need so much information? Could it be that in the future it might be possible to use a device that will allow one to experience what it is like to be another, to experience another mind - amplification of the human mind by the joining of minds?
The memex machine represents the foundation of a new way of organizing, and researching, also sharing info and interests! It is reflected in todays Email, Google, etc.
Many of the technologies available to us today were predicted by Vannevar Bush in his "As We May Think" article such as digital photography,search engines and hypertext.Vannevars predictions,as vague as they were,paved the way for others to take a different angle on "technologies" of the time and to come up with new ideas on how to make them more advanced.
There are many technologies which Vannevar Bush predicted that we use today, such as dry photography. Now, with the use of digital cameras, we can take pictures and print them without having to dry them. The television is another thing that we use today. Thinking about it, we use a ot of technologies today that Vannevar Bush considered a dream in the article "As We May Think"
he predicted many inovations such as tv, fax, "scan cam", digital recording and automatic transcription of recorded words, robotics and automation, pc's and pda's/ hypertext and programmes like microsoft WORD
While the memex is a good representation of the office PC.. Bush's other predicted technological advances were in the field of dry photography and the fact that we can carry around a camera in our phones.. also faxes mouses and recording devices..
bush predicted many of the technologies we currently take for granted when using the internet. his memex machine gave way to the personal computer aswell as hypertext thus enabling the world wide web to be created and developed into the internet we use today where we access sites like wikipedia- a site which utilises the theories presented in "as we may think".
Personally I bleieve that Vanevar Bush's predictions were the basis of a wide variety of technologies which are used by millions every day and he was also the inspiration for many other inovative peolpe i years to follow such as Ted Nelson andDoug Engelbart. His concept's put forward in 'As We May Think' were years ahead of its time such as dry photography, a facsimile machine, hypertext which would eventually become hugely important in the development of computers and the Memex which provided the concept of a machine for organizing files and making them easily and spedily accessible and could also be edited. Bush's predictions laiddown the foundation for modern technology
His views changed the way people looked at technology his time,he mentions "memex" which is something very similar to what we can do today. We can already keep track of our previous searches and associate them with the links we have clicked for example.
Vaneavar Bush predicted many technolagys which are common today such as dry photography, internet mailing and his idea of a computer storing a libary is now reality with wikipedia and ofcourse the search engine, google!!
Paul Otlet proposed a proto-hypertext concept based on his monographic principle in which all documents would be decomposed down to unique phrases stored on index cards.`
Vannevar Bush predicted many technologies such as the memex which also links to the archive of microfilms, it is able to display books, texts or any document from the library and further able to automatically follow references from any given page to a specific page referenced.
In my opinion, there were many predictions made that closely resemble technology today. The idea of manipulating text and cross refernecing it with other entries, and storing them all on interchangeable films is vdery like the idea of word processing today, even the interchangeability of the microfilms is like a predecessor to the memory stick of today.
21 comments so far
In my opinion Vannevar's predictions bare resemblences to many modern technologies. Memex- Vannever's idea of a machine that would be an augmentation of a persons memory has become a reality through technologies such as wikipedia were collaberative information can be stored and accessed. Other predictions such as dry printing also now exist.
2 years, 2 months ago by woowoo
Even though he did 'Predict' many technologies such as hypertext in his essay "As we may think", I think that it's important to note that Vannevar's arguments were incredibly vague, for example "cathode ray tubes rendering visible an occurrence so brief that by comparison a microsecond is a long time", while an accurate prediction, almost sounds like a description from a cheap sci-fi book. My point being that it is not particularly difficult to make predictions based on ideas and technologies which already exist. The predicition that I have just mentioned for example is merely an expansion on existing camera technologies of the time, Vannevars hypertext is merely a quicker, electronic form of indexing and his ideas on speech recognition existed in science fiction for decades.
2 years, 2 months ago by shamkennedy
Vannevar's "predictions" are not what i consider to be actual predictions but rather the first steps in the evolution of modern day technologies such as : speech to text software, Artificial Intelligence, DataBase technology, search engines, hypertext linkage.
2 years, 2 months ago by jaikuguy
Vannevar Bush article "as we may think" predicted a huge number of technologies that are currently avaliable to the public including personal computers, the Internet, hypertext etc. Perhaps more important in my view is the relationship between man and computers invisioned by Bush. That of how commputers would agument man brain by vastly increasing his access to and ability to store information and computers ability to free man from many long repetative task's
2 years, 1 month ago by GRUVMAN
Bush invisioned many ideas to do with computers for the future. Many materialised into a basic form, some surpassed what he thought was possible and some have still yet to be achieved in this highly advanced age we live in. Of the predictions he made the following are a small few that we take for granted every day that Bush thought of a long time ago; expert systems, search engines, voice recognition, translators and hypertext.
2 years, 1 month ago by Dessyonhigh
A number of ‘predictions’ struck me when I read “As we may think” by Vannemar Bush. Firstly the whole idea of digital cameras and photography is referred to many times- “advanced photography which can record what is seen “, and probably the most acute forecast - “Often it would be advantageous to be able to snap the camera and to look at the picture immediately.“ Is that not digital photography in a nutshell? Secondly, Vannemar prophesised something, which would have been, in my mind, completely unthought-of until very recently- computer dictation. The first functional computer dictation device I can find is 1997- 52 years after the essay was published. Now that’s forward thinking! The modern calculator, the manual one, and perhaps the digital calculator in every PC/Laptop is also envisaged by Vannemar - “To perform arithmetical computation involves also subtraction, multiplication, and division, and in addition some method for temporary storage of results, removal from storage for further manipulation, and recording of final results by printing” Computers are eluded to as well, and are imagined to have ‘enormous appetites‘- “…they will perform complex arithmetical computations at exceedingly high speeds, and they will record results in such form as to be readily available for distribution or for later further manipulation. Such machines will have enormous appetites. One of them will take instructions and data from a roomful of girls armed with simple keyboard punches, and will deliver sheets of computed results every few minutes. There will always be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things. “ Other resources and methods of information retrieval are also referred to, such as online encyclopaedias. This is what I believe Vannemar is referring to in Section 6- "Wholly new forms of encyclopaedias will appear, ready-made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified." The modern ability of ‘bookmarking’ webpage’s is also talked about briefly in Section 7.
2 years, 1 month ago by smilyhat
Bush predicted technologies such as memex, hypertext and the internet and a form of camera that has alot of features of the modern day Digital camera.In saying that i must also point out alot of the things he seemed to predicted are just a primative form of what they have become today.
2 years, 1 month ago by BlackenedWithin
Technologies available today that were predicted by Vannevar Bush such as microphotography...nearly every one of us has a camera phone / digital camera that employs this invention and the ability to use computers and science to store information with the memex so the human brain is not overloaded with information from everything it communicates with. As well as these, in his article he spoke about a speech to text transcriber...think of the benefits that this has had in the medical world with people such as Steven Hawkings using an up-dated improved version of this idea every day. Vannevar Bush's article clearly planted the seed in peoples minds for technologies like this
2 years, 1 month ago by chiefwhip
It is Vannevar Bush's thinking regarding why such machine/systems as his Memex should exist that attract my attention. If one reads into the lives of people like Ted Nelson (Hyper Text), Tim Berners-Lee (World Wide Web) and Doug Engelbart (the Mouse, the Arpanet) you will find they all say they were greatly inspired by Bush's visions. You could trace most electronic developments back to Bush and his followers. However Bush talked about the amplification of the human mind, this was his reasoning for the Memex. Brewster Kahle (Alexa Internet Company) says "Bush's great insight was realising that there's more value in the connections between the data than in the data itself". Bush's memex would record intimate thoughts,or "associative trails, as he called them. "The personal machine," Bush wrote in 1965, will deliver "a new form of inheritance, not merely of genes, but of intimate thought processes. The son will inherit from his father the trails his father followed as his thoughts matured, with his father's comments and criticisms along the way. The son will select those that are fruitful, exchange with his colleagues, and further refine for the next generation. No longer, when a person is old, will he forget." This would be the ultimate diary. For decades Bush's predictions were ignored by the computer priesthood (well in to the 1980s) who hardly cared about individuals who had to deal with information, people were expected to mold their behaviour to the systems demands. That priesthood came under atttack during the 1960s. The new generation of computer scientists wanted to build computers that served people not the other way around. They embraced Bush as a figure who could validate their approach and picked up on his trail. Doug Englbart openly described Bush as his patron saint. The developments that we've seen were shaped by Bush's thinking for why we should develop the Memex. The inspiration appears to be the idea that we can develop human nature to higher ideals. To this ends it appears as if scientist are trying to develop technology that will record a persons complete existance,(Everything seen (Digital Cameras), heard (Digital Recording Devices), thought (Digital Recording of Neuron Activity in the brain) etc...). "For what reason do we need so much information? Could it be that in the future it might be possible to use a device that will allow one to experience what it is like to be another, to experience another mind - amplification of the human mind by the joining of minds?
2 years, 1 month ago by meltedmuppet
The memex machine represents the foundation of a new way of organizing, and researching, also sharing info and interests! It is reflected in todays Email, Google, etc.
2 years, 1 month ago by Dimebag
Many of the technologies available to us today were predicted by Vannevar Bush in his "As We May Think" article such as digital photography,search engines and hypertext.Vannevars predictions,as vague as they were,paved the way for others to take a different angle on "technologies" of the time and to come up with new ideas on how to make them more advanced.
2 years, 1 month ago by JonnySniper
There are many technologies which Vannevar Bush predicted that we use today, such as dry photography. Now, with the use of digital cameras, we can take pictures and print them without having to dry them. The television is another thing that we use today. Thinking about it, we use a ot of technologies today that Vannevar Bush considered a dream in the article "As We May Think"
2 years, 1 month ago by leprechaun2007
he predicted many inovations such as tv, fax, "scan cam", digital recording and automatic transcription of recorded words, robotics and automation, pc's and pda's/ hypertext and programmes like microsoft WORD
2 years, 1 month ago by DARK
While the memex is a good representation of the office PC.. Bush's other predicted technological advances were in the field of dry photography and the fact that we can carry around a camera in our phones.. also faxes mouses and recording devices..
2 years, 1 month ago by mobrule
bush predicted many of the technologies we currently take for granted when using the internet. his memex machine gave way to the personal computer aswell as hypertext thus enabling the world wide web to be created and developed into the internet we use today where we access sites like wikipedia- a site which utilises the theories presented in "as we may think".
2 years, 1 month ago by JustSean
Personally I bleieve that Vanevar Bush's predictions were the basis of a wide variety of technologies which are used by millions every day and he was also the inspiration for many other inovative peolpe i years to follow such as Ted Nelson andDoug Engelbart. His concept's put forward in 'As We May Think' were years ahead of its time such as dry photography, a facsimile machine, hypertext which would eventually become hugely important in the development of computers and the Memex which provided the concept of a machine for organizing files and making them easily and spedily accessible and could also be edited. Bush's predictions laiddown the foundation for modern technology
2 years, 1 month ago by ntaki3
His views changed the way people looked at technology his time,he mentions "memex" which is something very similar to what we can do today. We can already keep track of our previous searches and associate them with the links we have clicked for example.
2 years, 1 month ago by havajake
Vaneavar Bush predicted many technolagys which are common today such as dry photography, internet mailing and his idea of a computer storing a libary is now reality with wikipedia and ofcourse the search engine, google!!
2 years, 1 month ago by frog
Paul Otlet proposed a proto-hypertext concept based on his monographic principle in which all documents would be decomposed down to unique phrases stored on index cards.`
2 years, 1 month ago by xxlollycxx
Vannevar Bush predicted many technologies such as the memex which also links to the archive of microfilms, it is able to display books, texts or any document from the library and further able to automatically follow references from any given page to a specific page referenced.
2 years, 1 month ago by Stragg
In my opinion, there were many predictions made that closely resemble technology today. The idea of manipulating text and cross refernecing it with other entries, and storing them all on interchangeable films is vdery like the idea of word processing today, even the interchangeability of the microfilms is like a predecessor to the memory stick of today.
2 years, 1 month ago by CrazyCatLady