Darren Lunn
Mark Bernstein
Cathy Marshall
J. Nathan Matias
Frank Tompa
ABSTRACT
In July 1945, Vannevar Bush published the seminal paper As We May Think in Atlantic Monthly [2]. In this paper Bush proposed MEMEX, a device where information and records could be stored and linked together through 'trails' and 'associations' rather than 'artificial' indexing mechanisms. This idea is credited with being the inspiration, and precursor, for the modern World Wide Web (WWW) invented by Tim Berners-Lee, but as Harper notes, for most of the article, Bush was not concerned solely with the technical aspects of his MEMEX system. Instead, as with most computer visionaries, he was more concerned with how the computer system and its interfaces could help humanity [3]. We must therefore consider if, as a research field, we are still trying to build MEMEX as Bush envisioned it, or are we more influenced by a vision of information storage and presentation, of which Bush's paper was one of many?
- M. Buckland. Emanuel Goldberg and his Knowledge Machine. Libraries Unlimited, 2006. ISBN: 0-313-31332-6.Google Scholar
- V. Bush. As We May Think. The Atlantic Monthly, July 1945.Google Scholar
- S. Harper. 'As We May Think' at 65. SIGWEB Newsletter, (Spring):1--3, 2010. Google ScholarDigital Library
- T. H. Nelson. As We Will Think. In J. M. Nyce and P. Kahn, editors, From Memex to Hypertext: Vannevar Bush and the Mind's Machine, pages 245--260. Academic Press Professional, Inc., 1991. Google ScholarDigital Library
- J. Nielsen. Multimedia and Hypertext: The Internet and Beyond. Morgan Kaufmann, 1995. ISBN: 0-12-518408-5. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Past visions of hypertext and their influence on us today
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