As we may think

evolution of computers

Seems to predict things like Wikipedia/ the internet.

Bush shows some amazing foresight when imagining future technologocial advances. He dreams of effective searh engines that help scientists find relevant information quickly and efficiently. Although his predictions appear on target, his belief that techonology will solve the information glut is incorrect. Even with sophisticated search algorithms, we still face the problem of too much information and being unable to access the most relevant pieces quickly. In fact, the web has provided us with an unlimited storage capacity for information that is quickly being filled with information with varying sorts of quality. People, including scientists, must be more vigilant in their efforts to ensure what materials they find are of high quality which becomes difficult when faced with the sheer quantity of the information available.

It's always interesting to read historical predicts of the future. I think it was Steve Jobs (though I can't find it online) who said that it's easy to predict what will be around in 50 years, but not in 10 years. Bush's account of "the future" makes this plain: what he describes is functionally pretty similar to what we have today but his conception of it was bound to the technologies he could foresee. It's fascinating that he had such an ambitious vision with the "memex" without any conception of digital computing. (I wonder whether he didn't know about the digital computing used in WWII intelligence or he just couldn't write about it.)

My favorite point he raised in the article was how if the Pharoahs had detailed plans for an automobile, it would take all the human and material capital of the land to produce it, and then it wouldn't make it to Giza without breaking. A less hypothetical example was that Babbage's design for the Difference Engine could not be built at the time.

While "science" may be lofty and abstract, research costs capital and what research gets done depends on costs and benefits. I like this recognition of practical considerations.

He also pointed out specifically that what the Pharoahs lacked was mass production. They didn't have the parts they needed. One might characterize the development of our technological civilization as the ever expanding availability of "parts". The industrial age brought commoditization of machined parts. Now we have commoditization of electronic circuits. Right now we're deep into commoditization of software components, a la open source, that raise the shoulders that we can stand on to produce new and greater creations. (Further, open source lets us copy and rework those supporting shoulders to suit new needs.)

I particularly liked the idea of "trails of information" presented by Bush. He presents not as an machine learning problem to dynamically find associations in raw data but rather something that naturally arises from humans interacting with the information they access and process. The system merely allows people to make these associations and share them with others. Also interesting is the idea of professional "trail blazers" who swim through the sea of information and link one record with another. Are we, as researchers, these trail blazers?

Bush's memex idea involves associations between data. To link two documents together, one would enter the same code on both. This seems to be an early form of metadata--metadata that says these two concepts are related. Today, files have metadata automatically associated with it (timestamps, authors, size, etc) by the system or is annotated after the fact by humans with metadata (such as tags on citeulike!). Metadata is still data and adds to the jumble of information overload but potentially helps to increase organizability and facilitate search.

Vannevar Bush outlines the problem of progress in science being limited by the increasing specialization of knowledge, the incredible speed that knowledge grows at, and our inability to scale comparably. He outlines some possibilities for how the technology will be implemented, based on technologies that were available in the 1940's, and describes incredibly innovative uses for the technology.

I think the "trail blazers" he talks about are bloggers more than researchers. His idea of associative recall of information is a prescient vision of the web. I think the only odd thing which sticks out is this idea of using a code book. Perhaps he also for saw that we would still be dependent on physical artifacts for much of our information?

It is interesting to note the parallels between advancements in technology today and the technologies that Vannevar Bush envisioned in his paper. Millions of bits of information can be compacted into extremely small disks which can be read almost anywhere. His description of the "memex" is remarkably similar to personal computers these days. Another thing that came to mind when reading about "trails of information" was a software by Google called Google Notebook. This software allows users to tag webpages or relevant information from relevant webpages and compile them in different notebooks, similar to the maps of related pages described in the paper. He also foresaw the usage of computers not just by scientists as was perceived at the time, but instead "whenever logical processes of thought are employed, there is an oppurtunity for the machine."

The advent of the internet and silicon revolution has seen Bush's ideas come to fruition. It will be interesting to see how some of the breakthrough ideas and research of today will manifest into reality 50 or 60 years from now.

I like the final paragraph -- was he also forecasting computing for social good? What are the problems that computers can allow us to solve, here and now, that couldn't be solved before?: "The applications of science have built man a well-supplied house, and are teaching him to live healthily therein. They have enabled him to throw masses of people against one another with cruel weapons. They may yet allow him truly to encompass the great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience. He may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record for his true good. Yet, in the application of science to the needs and desires of man, it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which to terminate the process, or to lose hope as to the outcome."