In the 1930s, Vannevar Bush conceived the information storage devices that people will have in the future. In As We May Think, he envisioned that people would store personal books, communications, and records through such devices, and be able to consult the information in a fast and flexible way. This mechanized device is called Memex.
The concept of Memex might have been born out of Bush’s reflection on the changes that human technology brings to people’s lives. During the Second World War, the fruits of scientific and technological progress were basically used in the war. Bush was one of the leaders of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research during the war. He discovered that the advancement brought about by the development of science and technology to a greater extent was in terms of strength rather than knowledge. Therefore, he decided to urge scientists and scholars to turn to a more arduous but significant task — making human knowledge reserves more accessible. He was eager to seize the possibility that science and technology can produce great benefits to the power of human thought.
It is undeniable that the idea of “relevant index” in the Memex concept accurately speaks the part of the functions included in today’s Internet. Bush envisioned that in the future, technology will allow people to quickly process large amounts of information, link two separate pages together, and modify the way these materials link to each other. In this way, people can easily obtain annotations written by others or access related content. This is consistent with the ability of the human brain to remember information mainly through association. Bush described this mechanized technology Memex as “an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory”.
In our current Internet environment, various derivative blogs, forums, and electronic encyclopedias are realizing Bush’s expectations to an astonishing degree. People can already link to different websites in platforms such as Twitter and Instagram in the form of links. When we need to access this information, we only need one click. Moreover, the way of association of information is customized by the user. While accessing this type of information, we are also tracking other people’s browsing history on the Internet. Incredibly, Bush’s prediction of this status quo was 50 years before the Internet became a public resource.
Of course, Bush’s views also have time limitations. He greatly underestimated the storage capacity of modern technological equipment. Nowadays, people no longer need to build an entire architecture to store and access a large amount of information, but instead use cloud information and portable mobile devices to get and download the resources they need at any time. 4G technology has affected the social networking platforms we use. With the support of the technological ability to quickly accept and process information, we can load pictures and short videos in a very short time. It has enabled short video applications such as TikTok to win a large number of markets in recent years. At the same time, QR code scanning technology is also widely used worldwide. The interconnection of information has jumped out of the links. Information can already be spread and routinized in the form of QR codes. These are things Bush didn’t expect.
Bush’s legacy also still reminding us to remain forward-looking in science and technology. The 5G era is approaching, and interaction designers need to adapt to this new technological environment. Predicting and evaluating the information technology environment in the near future will also become a very important part of our work.
It’s great to associate Bush’s legacy to modern technologies. Taking the consideration of it towards the projection of technology development is valuable.
Yes, Bush’s vision was the starting point of the development
The limitation of Bush’s vision proves that out technologies have come so far and many things can be improved.