As We May ThinkBy Vannevar Bush

July 1945

Presented bySteve Hookway

9/6/05

Too Much Information Then

“..there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends”

“publication has extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record”

Now In July 2000 more than 2 billion pages[1]

4 billion estimated in 2001[1] In 2002 over 9,040,000 Web Sites[2]

1. Sizing the Internet, Cyveillance White Paper Prepared by Brian H. Murray, Cyveillance, Inc.

2. OCLC: Online Computer Library Center

Creating a Record: Photography Then

Faster, dry development Smaller cameras Reduce the size of the image without loss of

quality - microfilm Now

Polaroid Cameras Digital Cameras Electronic imaging a vast improvement over

microfilm[1,2]1. DocFinity: http://www.docfinity.com/2. Captiva: http://www.captivasoftware.com/index.asp

Creating a Record:Written

Then Synthesize speech – Voder Record speech – Vocoder, Stenotype Early voice recognition Early character recognition - adding

Now Voice and Text Recognition

Software[1] Philips 9450 VC Pocket Memo[2]

1. ART: Speech and Handwriting Interfaces for Mobil Devices2. Phillips: 9450 VC Pocket Memo

Advanced Mathematics Then

Some machines to solve differential and integral equations

Predicted a machine able to reason with mathematical data

Now Handheld calculators to solve differential and

integral equations IBM’s Blue Gene/Lite capable of 360 teraflops –

trillions of calculations per second used to study interactions between atmospheric chemistry and pollution[1]

1. Blue Gene/L

Information Selection Then

Simple Selection (Card Reader) Examines each piece in turn

Problems indexing Now

Existing web search techniques Content/Link analysis

Information Selection Then

Conventional Indexing is Inconvenient The Memex

Large Storage Easy retrieval

Now Conventional Indexing Made Easier The Personal PC

Dell’s Base Model comes with an 80GB hard drive [1]

1. Dell: Dimension Desktops

Associative Indexing Then

Memex documents linked via code word and photocell dots

Memex links are easily created and traversed

Now HTML anchors link web content together Able to navigate forwards and

backwards through links (with help of crawler)

Beyond the Memex Then

Information observed/recorded via senses (mechanical)

Now Able to convert thought to

mechanical output [1] Not so far off from being able to

observe, record, and access information simply by thinking about it

1. Monkey controls robotic arm using brain signals sent over the Internet: Elizabeth A. Thomson, News Office December 6, 2000