Thursday, October 16, 2014

The Memex

This week, I read Bush’s article, “As We May Think”, which explains the availability of more information in 1945 and how that was posing a problem. Bush proposed that there needed to be an effective mode in which to organize all this information so an increase in knowledge could also come with an increase in information. This creation to organize information was known as the Memex. The Memex was a device which would have the ability to store and organize all sorts of information in various forms (videos, books, etc). The user could search a certain term and the Memex would quickly pull up relevant information
                
After reading this article I also read the “The Memex Revisited” which was written by Bush in 1967. I also read about the symposium held in 1995 which was meant to consider Bush's Memex ideas 50 years later. It was interesting to read the development of the idea of the Memex through the years and how it is almost a reality today. The internet is basically a device that allows you to look up an idea or concept and you hope to get relevant information. There is still a lot of clutter on the internet however so often you get information that you did not really ask for. However, we have come extremely close to having a device that accomplishes what the theory of the Memex desired. 

After conducting a Google search I found some additional information on the Memex. I was curious to see what Bush imagined the Memex would like like. I found a picture that shows a large desk with the Memex technology on the top of it. The memex reminds me of a Xerox machine with all of its internal parts. Our modern day Memex (phones and laptops) do not resemble the Memex as envisioned by Bush at all in terms of form; however, they basically serve the same function. I was also curious about why the name Memex was chosen. I found that the name was chosen because it depicts its elements such as "memory" and "index" or "memory" and "extender". It is amazing that Bush was able to predict the possibility of a device that would become central to the lives of those living in the future. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think it’s interesting you found a picture of the Memex machine. You’re right, it does resemble a Xerox copy machine, but it functions much like an interactive SmartBoard that you can comment and edit things together with. I also agree with your second point that the Memex, in theory, resembles the Internet that would be utilized on a laptop computer screen that is much less clunky and way lighter than what Bush described his database to look like. Imagine if we couldn’t carry our databases and could only access them through this huge machine. It would make life much more difficult as we’d constantly have to find a place that possesses one of these machines and hope a line isn’t that long to use it. Bush was incredibly smart to create the name “Memex” as it does embody both those qualities “memory” and “index.” It’s like how the laptop is called a laptop because it sits on your lap, it just makes sense.