As We May Think
As We May Think ( German How we think are ) is an essay by the American engineer Vannevar Bush, which was published in 1945 in the Atlantic Monthly. Bush designs in the concept of universal knowledge engine Memex (short for Memory Extender ), which is considered the forerunner of personal computers and hypertext. In parallel with As We May Think Bush published a report to the American President ( "Science - The Endless Frontier " ), which recommends the government-sponsored integration of science, industry and the military.
Genesis and performance history
Bush has the Memex concept first outlined in 1939. A 1941 Memorandum Regarding arisen Memex was eventually extended to published in July 1945 essay As We May Think. An article appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in July 1945, which inspired Ted Nelson and Douglas Engelbart to the development of hypertext technology and innovation from the human-computer interaction. In September 1945, Life magazine printed an abridged version. After the war, Bush has his concept then gradually adapted to the progress of computer development: In 1959, he worked for a manuscript entitled Memex II from 1967 Memex Revisited is published in the Science is Not Enough collection. Even Bush's autobiography published in 1970 devoted to the Memex again a separate chapter.
Many computer pioneers saw looking back in Bush's Memex concept the starting point of intuitive interaction between humans and ( accounting) machine. Inspired by Bush's Memex designed about Doug Engelbart in the early 1950s, the principle of today's personal computer: "When I saw the connection in between a cathode-ray screen, to information processor, and a medium for Representing symbols to a person, it all tumbled together in about a half an hour. I started sketching a system in Which computers draw symbols on the screen for you, and you can steer it through different information domains with knobs and leers and transducers. I was designing all kinds of things you might also want to do if you had a system like the one Vannevar Bush had suggested "
Engelbart refers to this project later with the " Augmentation of Man 's Intellect ." Cyberspace researcher Howard Rheingold, however, called all the machines that meet such a purpose " tools for thought " (see the book of the same from the year 1985). Bush's Memex provides for Rheingold an important connecting link between older approaches of operating purely on the abstract number plane calculators and today's graphical user interfaces.
In addition to the device constellation Bush's idea has also influenced the development of the software. Ted Nelson designed the first hypertext concept based on Bush's vision and Engelbart's technical experiments in the 1960s with the Xanadu project. "The Memex is here ," he announced in his programmatic essay As We Will Think " search system exist; They are approaching cost feasibility; and the world is readier than it thinks. "With Xanadu is an artificial universe of networked documents arise. This Docuverse forms a "worldwide network, Intended to serve millions of users of reds dog Simultaneously from the corpus of the world 's stored writings, graphics, and data."
The stylization Bush to founding father of the personal computer, hypertext and the World Wide Web has not been without criticism. Technically, the knowledge engine, as it is presented to the public in 1945 in the Atlantic Monthly, little to do with today's computers, because it is a mixture of microfilm storage and analog computing machine. All attempts to implement Bush's idea with non- digital technology are, quite obviously failed. The high value As We May Think conceded so far has a lot to do with a historiographical production that is committed to a kind of " rhetoric of the beginning " as Stephan Porombka in hypertext. For a critique of a digital Myth (2001) writes (p. 27). Conceptually, however, the 1945, the vision of the information age quite a success story dar. Already the imprint of the legendary Essays in American Life Magazine has in fact accompanied by a figure that actually basic elements of today's personal computer displays, in particular screens for graphical representation of images and documents, as well as operating instruments to their calling, manipulation and storage.
Content
Bush begins his essay with a critique of existing forms of knowledge management: " There is a growing mountain of research", he notes, but that the methods to cope with the flood of information out of date: " Professionally our methods of Transmitting and reviewing the results of. research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for Their purpose " at the same time new techniques, however, are available to process information quickly and reliably, such as photocells, microfilm, cathode ray tubes and relay connections: " there are plenty of mechanical aids with Which to effect a transformation in scientific records ". The basic requirements sees Bush why in the flexibility and accessibility of stored data ". A record, if it is to be useful to science, must be Continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be Consulted " The problem is so far the " artificiality of systems of indexing": data would be arranged alphabetically or numerically, and would have to be searched according to the same scheme. The human mind, according to Bush, but work very differently: "It Operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next did is suggested by the association of thoughts [ ... ] " The solution, then, is this association ability, at least in part to" mechanize ".
To illustrate his idea, Bush makes a thought experiment: he designed a machine called Memex, a device " in Which to individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and Which is mechanized so did it 'may be Consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. " This makes the machine a" Enlarged intimate supplement " of human memory. Especially significant is formulated using the Memex example from today's perspective, the universal principle of linking information, the Vannevar Bush. " Associative trails " are intended to prevent lost in the flood of knowledge important information. "The process of tying two items together is the important thing ," Bush brings the principle of Memex to the point.
The link is both encoded in normal font, as well as in machine-readable form directly on the based on microfilm technology Memex documents. The linkage engineered can relate to all possible forms of representation of knowledge. Bush thinks of images, text, handwritten notes, which can be put into the system: "On the top of the memex is a transparent platen. On this are Placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, all sort of things. When one is in place, the depression of a lever Causes it to be photographed ontological the next blank space in a section of the memex film, movie, dry photography being employed. " But will also mention the possibility of sound recordings, and the simultaneous conversion of language in Scripture.
With the help of an archaic desktop interface, the data can be displayed and linked to each other: "It Consists of a desk [ ... ] On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading There is a keyboard. and sets of buttons and levers. " A permanently saved arrangement of such documents may at any time be called again: " [ ... ] When Numerous items have been joined together to form a Malthus trail, They can be reviewed in turn, proceed rapidly or slowly, by deflecting a lever [ ... ] It is exactly as though the physical items had been Gathered together from Widely separated sources and bound together to form a new book. " It's Bush with Memex, therefore, is to strengthen the neurological basis of thought processes technically, by their principles are externalized. Here, the boundaries of a mechanical simulation of biological processes, he is well aware: " One can not hope to equal the speed Malthus and flexibility with Which the mind follows in associative trail, but it Should Be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage. " The human mind is thus not exceeded, but only the best possible support. The lower flexibility in the area of associative link to Memex offset by the superior memory function.