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| The Memex |
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| Vannevar Bush first wrote about his device the memex in the early thirties, but didn't publish this until 1945, when his article "As We May Think"
was published in the Atlantic Monthly. This article, probably more than any other, is repeatedly quoted in hypertext research and this alone
can attest to its importance in this field. Indeed, both Ted Nelson and Douglas Engelbart have acknowledged it's influence on their own works. |
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So what is the Memex? It is "a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may
be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility". A memex would resemble a desk with two touch screen monitors and a scanning area. Inside would be
several gigabytes of storage, filled with text and graphical information, indexed according to a universal system.
This concept must have seemed very far-fetched n the 1930s, but Bush himself viewed the idea as conventional. |
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Bush's main concern wasn't with the development of the complex hardware needed to implement this system, but with the
ability to navigate the vast data store as more important. Here he describes the process of connecting information:
When the user is building trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him
are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. At the bottom of each there are a number of blank code spaces, and a pointer
is set to indicate one of these on each item. The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined. |
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| This description from 1945 would be a very good description today, of forming a link between nodes in todays hypertext software or the World Wide Web. |
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