Vannevar Bush published the famous “As We May Think” on The Atlantic Monthly in July 1945. In this article, he described an archiving and retrieval system called memex. This technology has laid a solid foundation for the rapidly developing search recommendation system.
Memex provides information storage and access based on the relevant track of personal judgment, reasoning and retrieval. Traditional retrieval systems is mainly designed for experienced researchers and well-trained librarians, while memex is suitable for all people. The memex conceived by Bush is similar to the associative thinking process of human beings. Google has a similar origin to memex. Google initially began as a tool for rating annotations. But later, they found it more useful to build a system in search than in annotation. Therefore, they focused on the development of search. This reminds me of TikTok, a popular application. It is well known that TikTok’s popularity is due to its advanced user recommendation system. It can provide similar video recommendations to users immediately after they like or even browse. This recommendation system allows users to avoid the fatigue of using App caused by excessive self-searching.
Users have doubts about whether the recommendation system has violated privacy. I believe Internet companies are also protecting users’ privacy in a more comprehensive way. For example, today’s websites ask users whether they accept cookies. It’s a better start.
Thank you for sharing! I think its interesting to see how forward motion in technology has brought up questions of basic human rights such as that of privacy.
I do agree with memex is suitable for all people, as everyone now has all the same rights to sharing on internet, also about the privacy issues, as nowadays society is unavailable to live without network, it does seems like a problem for us how to protect ourselves.
I believe the concept of the Memex, leading to the creation of the internet and search engines like Google are one of the greatest inventions of all time also have doubts just like you on the whole privacy issue as more and more of our physical contact interactions are going digital (such as banking, ordering food, purchasing products, etc.). Whether if it’s agreeing to “terms and policies” of a website or hackers trying to stealing our personal information, it is a growing problem.