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Inhabiting digital information space
Published in Naomi Jacobs, Rachel Cooper, Living in Digital Worlds, 2018
Augmenting our cognitive capabilities is not a new idea. In fact as we have established in Chapter 2, it is something that is already common with existing technologies. However, digital technology offers the opportunity to enhance our recall and memory to an extent not previously seen. This has been one of the intended goals since the early days of personal computation. For example, in 1945 Vannevar Bush described a theoretical system he called a ‘memex’ which would serve this purpose: ‘A memex 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. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory’ (Bush, 1945). Though the details of its function are different, he might have been describing the modern world wide web.
The Internet
Published in Gabriele Balbi, Paolo Magaudda, A History of Digital Media, 2018
Gabriele Balbi, Paolo Magaudda
The internet’s second incarnation as public service also emerged in Europe. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, at the CERN European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva (Switzerland), Tim Berners-Lee, Roger Cailliau and a group of other researchers came up with the idea of the World Wide Web, i.e. transforming a part of the internet into an information and document consultation, and not simply exchange, space (Gillies & Cailliau, 2000). It was not an entirely new field of thought. For several decades, a range of scholars and researchers had been debating the re-organization of human knowledge. In 1945, for example, Vannevar Bush had imagined a (never to be built) mechanical system designed to speed up information retrieval by linking up different sources by means of intersecting commands based on semantic resemblance. Memex, as this analog filing system was called, was in turn inspired by the functioning of the human brain and, in particular, the ways in which information searches in the cerebral cortex take place (Bush, 1945; Nyce & Kahn, 1991). In 1960, Ted Nelson (1974) elaborated the hypertext concept in the unfinished Xanadu project coming up with the idea of applying Bush’s mechanical processes to the digital world. In the wake of Bush’s and to an even greater extent Nelson’s studies, Berners-Lee formulated two of the WWW’s key concepts: making the Web into a repository of computer knowledge contents (the CERN computer initially and then worldwide) and creating a system that allowed text documents and work sheets to be published on the network’s nodes and then modified constantly by users (Berners-Lee, 1999).
The Evolution of Cloud Computing
Published in John W. Rittinghouse, James F. Ransome, Cloud Computing, 2017
John W. Rittinghouse, James F. Ransome
The Internet is named after the Internet Protocol, the standard communications protocol used by every computer on the Internet. The conceptual foundation for creation of the Internet was significantly developed by three individuals. The first, Vannevar Bush,8 wrote a visionary description of the potential uses for information technology with his description of an automated library system named MEMEX (see Figure 1.5). Bush introduced the concept of the MEMEX in the 1930s as a microfilm-based”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.”9
Scientific Journeys: A Physicist Explores the Culture, History and Personalities of Science
Published in Technometrics, 2021
Chapter 4 tells us about Vannevar Bush, who was a Ph.D. MIT engineer coordinated the U.S. scientific research during World War II as director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Among his many accomplishments was the invention of one of the first analog computers to solve complex differential equations. After the war, Bush discussed the need for what is now called IT-information technology to manipulate, share, and capitalize on human knowledge and data. His 1945 article, “As We May Think,” outlines a device he called a “memex” that could compress, store, and provide access to all forms of the one’s written communications, and his ideas for such a device are often cited as the foundation for the hypertext coding of information. He is remembered also for the government report, “Science: The Endless Frontier,” where he described how to achieve scientific and technological advances, which became the road map for subsequent development of the U.S. scientific enterprise. From Bush’s letter to the President F.D. Roosevelt: