As We May Think, predicting the web in 1945

I might be the last one to read the 1945 article from Vannevar Bush (then Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development) titles “As We May Think” where he envisions a solution to better share knowledge among scientists. This is one of the most visionary text I have ever read, published 43 years before the World Wide Web popped-up in Tim Berners-Lee’s mind.

It’s 1945. The war has just ended. Men of science, and most specially the physicists who were deeply involved in creating new weapons, go back to their offices and wonder what to do next. Research has been galvanized by the global effort to overcome Hitler, and the scientific community runs into a new problem: “publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record“. Overload is looming (already! the oldest record is 1613 so nothing’s new), bringing it’s usual lot of negative consequences, among which the most dramatic is that research does not “reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; [...] truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential.” Google already had clients in 1945…

Vannevar Bush imagines a solution with the technologies that surround him, and dreams of a Memex, an “intimate supplement to memory [...], 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.”

Meet the Memex:

If the user wishes to consult a certain book, he taps its code on the keyboard, and the title page of the book promptly appears before him, projected onto one of his viewing positions. [...]  he has supplemental levers. On deflecting one of these levers to the right he runs through the book before him, each page in turn being projected at a speed which just allows a recognizing glance at each. If he deflects it further to the right, he steps through the book 10 pages at a time; still further at 100 pages at a time. [...] Any given book of his library can thus be called up and consulted with far greater facility than if it were taken from a shelf.

He can add marginal notes and comments, taking advantage of one possible type of dry photography, and it could even be arranged so that he can do this by a stylus scheme [...] just as though he had the physical page before him.

[[[Bush was dreaming of a browser, and of a personal Google to store his data. But he also wanted tagging, commenting, sharing and hyperlinking.]]]

The owner of the memex, let us say, is interested in the origin and properties of the bow and arrow. [...] First he runs through an encyclopedia, finds an interesting but sketchy article, leaves it projected. Next, in a history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the two together. Thus he goes, building a trail of many items. Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either linking it into the main trail or joining it by a side trail to a particular item. [...]

And his trails do not fade. Several years later, his talk with a friend turns to the queer ways in which a people resist innovations, even of vital interest. In fact he has a trail on it. A touch brings up the code book. Tapping a few keys projects the head of the trail. A lever runs through it at will, stopping at interesting items, going off on side excursions. It is an interesting trail, pertinent to the discussion. So he sets a reproducer in action, photographs the whole trail out, and passes it to his friend for insertion in his own memex, there to be linked into the more general trail.

[[[And we thought web 2.0 was a new idea? No No. Even Wikipedia was evoked in the article.]]]

Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified.

And what’s the most amazing feat of Bush? To come up with all these ideas in a mechanical world, with good old wheels and cameras to make this work. Hats off.

Vannevar Bush: As We May Think (The Atlantic)