As We May Think

Vannevar Bush's proposed Invention the "Memex" because he believed it would help people organize information and store them, which would also be recoverable. "The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers--conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, as they appear. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial."

He described the invention "It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk."

From this it sounds like he is simply describing a modern day computer or laptop but with a very strange sci-fi flare. I love the idea that Bush's proposed invention is like the precursor to hypertext and the internet.

When he describes trails he says that the human brain will not be as good as his invention because The "trails" we choose to follow from one thought to another are influenced by a multitude of cultural and personal factors that form the lens through which we view ourselves and the world around us--factors such as race, economic outlook, and academic and professional training. He also believed "One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which the mind follows an associative trail, but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage." With his he says in terms of everything the brain can do the invention does not have the flexibility to achieve but when it come to storing information and keeping it safe it would be better.