In the post World War II article entitled "As We May Think," Vannevar Bush expressed his concerns that science would be used for destruction. He also wrote that there would be an influx of information but an overall lack of understanding and knowledge. Bush described his envision of a machine called a memex which he imagined would one day organize and regurgitate information in a way that would be accessible in parts. This would, in his opinion, supplement human knowledge. About twenty years later, Bush revisited this topic and wrote an article entitled "Memex revisited," in which he reflected about his original ideas in light of recent technological advancements that made the idea of the memex a real possibility.

Brown and MIT published a response containing their thoughts on Bush's piece, and most notably explained that, "Bush turned out to be not so much predicting the future as creating it through the influence, both direct and indirect, of his compelling vision on major figures like Engelbart, Nelson, and the other symposium speakers." I think this is an interesting statement that definitely warrants further exploration into the matter. In doing so, I decided to search for scholarly journals that spoke to Bush's memex writings.

One entitled Social Media and the Production of Knowledge: A Return to Little Science? stuck out to me most. In the piece, Leah Lievrouw purposely analyzed Bush's writings in terms of what he actually said, as opposed to making extrapolations of his predictions like so many others have decided to do. Lierouw particularly noted that the internet is not part of the memex applied in today's society, because Bush described the memex as a personal, not group, means of organizing data. That being said, Lierouw claims that the iPod/tablet is a much more comparable device to the memex. Finally, Social Media and the Production of Knowledge: A Return to Little Science? claims that "there are a few key ideas that can still be goals in terms of an easy-to-use personal collection that is a collection to one's own memory." For example, Lierouw says, the iPod is an effective and popular way to organize lyrical data, however, it does not specifically address the organization of printed material, like the memex entailed. Therefore, an iPod/tablet is not a perfect memex comparable, in her opinion. I would like to end by suggesting that perhaps tablets are, in fact, a very good modern memex comparable, because the eBook market is so popular today.




http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/doi/10.1002/asi.20415/full

Leah A. Lievrouw, Social Media and the Production of Knowledge: A Return to Little Science?, Social Epistemology, 2010, 24, 3, 219