As we may think

use in organizing the vast record of human knowledge. Inspired by his previous work in microfilm mass storage, Bush envisioned an information workstationâthe memexâcapable of storing, navigating, and annotating an entire libraryâs worth of information. His idea of push-button linking between documents is commonly held to be the forefather of modern hypertext. However, Bushâs vision lacked several key innovations present in todayâs information workstations, including searchable, digital content and rapid information sharing on a network. Bush tells a masterful story of technologyâs state of the art in 1945 and of taking its trends to their logical conclusion, revealing how his vision was both guided by and limited by that technology. This document shall explore and summarize Bush the man, the contributions and limitations of his paper âAs We May Think, â and our class discussion thereof. We begin with (1) a biography of Bush and (2) a discussion of his vision for organizing the human record. We discuss in turn Bushâs predictions on technology for (3) information acquisition, mass storage, (4) automation, and (5) information retrieval, and the culmination of those technologies in (6) the memex. We then discuss (7) the limitations of the memex and of Bushâs vision at large. 1. Bush Biography We give a brief introduction of Bushâs life 1, so as to establish his personal background motivating âAs We May Think.â