The Memex, designed by Vannevar Bush was the first way to “link” information through a machine. Bush envisioned a system where one could pull up two different sources of information, and digitally link them. This was the first hyperlink, which later became a staple of the internet.
In the early 2000’s, blogs were blowing up, and new platforms where cropping up everywhere. But back then, there was a thin veil between the front and back ends, meaning the user needed to know basic HTML to publish or format their blogs. Hyperlinks were also used. to reference articles talked about in the blog, related blog posts, and additional information. Without these links, blogs would have been static places, much like a dead end street.
Now, we have even easier ways to link related content that Bush could have never dreamed of. We have machine learning, looking at your other content for suggestions, we have hashtags and location tags, and we have one of the most intuitive features, suggested friends, drawing from common friends, interests, or even a phone number in your phone. These advances makes the links and connections we encounter every day subtle and almost makes it feel like our own idea to link things together, not a suggestion by a computer..
It is interesting to see that you mentioned machine learning in this article. with the ability of ML plus the idea of memex, the computer indeed has greater responsibility