Bush's 'As We May Think'
Vannevar Bush headed the US Office of Scientific Research and Development through WWII. This essay was a post-war note from him, musing about what the main goals of scientists should be, now that they had mobilized but no longer had a set goal. He specifies that at the beginning, some scientists (such as biologists) were able to do the work of war in the exact same peace-time offices they would start from and return to. Physicists, by contrast, had brought forth an array of powerful weaponry which, while successful, did not have a clear peace-time development plan. And so Bush suggests that the major thing scientists and researchers should work on now is the problem of knowledge itself.
He states that “The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships.” This essay outlines how we may begin to develop the knowledge systems and frameworks of the future.
I’m not as impressed or amused by future predictions as I probably should be. Bush spends much of this essay extrapolating evolutions in technology that will allow the researcher of the future to have a much smoother experience. These include audio transcription, easy photography, and microfilm storage. While the general trends are absolutely correct (and are impressive in their forecasting) the specifics always strike me as sort of childish. This is a sin of mine, and I should have grace for those that would exceed me, if only we could be at the same time. But still, you must admit that the predicted world just seems more whimsical than the world of today.
Here, he predicts the nature of photography as a small “walnut” strapped to the head of a researcher: “There is film in the walnut for a hundred exposures, and the spring for operating its shutter and shifting its film is wound once for all when the film clip is inserted. It produces its result in full color.” I think Vannevar would be most impressed with what we have today.
The actual reason this is considered Canon is not for the specifics of its technology prophecy (which does go on for some time), but for posing the problem of knowledge retrieval in an age of massive human knowledge production, and for proposing a (albeit mechanical) hyperlink system as the solution. His “Memex” is a sort of proto-desktop, with a huge number of slides and screens that would be labeled and organized in associative threads rather than alphabetically or numerically. Doctors could easily wind through threads of relevant and related symptoms and diseases. Lawyers could do the same for case law. While many of his mechanical predictions seem off, the diagnosis and proposal of what is essentially a personal Wikipedia back in 1945 is incredibly impressive.
Favorite Quotes:
"Of what lasting benefit has been man's use of science and of the new instruments which his research brought into existence? ... they have increased his security and released him partly from the bondage of bare existence."
"The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it."
"Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the Memex and there amplified."