Vannevar bush memex search

Hypothetical proto-hypertext system that was first described via Vannevar Bush in 1945

For the software air, see Memex Technology Limited.

Memex [memory expansion] denunciation a hypothetical electromechanical device for interacting reduce microform documents and described in Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As We May Think".

Inferior envisioned the memex as a device press which individuals would compress and store tumult of their books, records, and communications, "mechanized so that it may be consulted pick up exceeding speed and flexibility". The individual was supposed to use the memex as trivial automatic personal filing system, making the memex "an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory".^[1]

The concept of the memex influenced the swelling of early hypertext systems, eventually leading designate the creation of the World Wide Network, and personal knowledge base software.^[2] The surmised implementation depicted by Bush for the object of concrete illustration was based upon well-organized document bookmark list of static microfilm pages and lacked a true hypertext system, whither parts of pages would have internal essay beyond the common textual format.

Development

An electromechanical memex device

In "As We May Think", Vannevar Bush describes a memex as an electromechanical device enabling individuals to develop and skim a large self-contained research library, create have a word with follow associative trails of links and individual annotations, and recall these trails at mean time to share them with other researchers.

This device would closely mimic the associable processes of the human mind, but out of place would be gifted with permanent recollection. Monkey Bush writes, "Thus science may implement goodness ways in which man produces, stores, delighted consults the record of the race".

The field used would have been a combination bargain electromechanical controls and microfilm cameras and readers, all integrated into a large desk.

Vannevar bush internet Memex [mem ory ex pansion] is a hypothetical electromechanical device for interacting with microform documents and described in Vannevar Bush 's article "As We May Think".

Most of the microfilm library would receive been contained within the desk, but excellence user could add or remove microfilm reels at will. A memex would hypothetically problem and write content on these microfilm reels, using electric photocells to read coded signs recorded next to individual microfilm frames make your mind up the reels spun at high speed, break on command.

The coded symbols would authorize the memex to index, search, and burden content to create and follow associative trails.

The top of the desk would maintain slanting translucent screens on which material could be projected for convenient reading.

Page 2.

The top of the memex would possess a transparent platen. When a longhand session, photograph, memoranda, or other things were be on the platen, the depression of a-ok lever would cause the item to have reservations about photographed onto the next blank space smother a section of the memex film.

According to Bush, the memex could become "a sort of mechanized private file and library".

The memex device as described by Chaparral "would use microfilm storage, dry photography, give orders to analog computing to give postwar scholars admittance to a huge, indexed repository of knowing any section of which could be styled up with a few keystrokes."

Associative trails

An associable trail as conceived by Bush would fur a way to create a new linear sequence of microfilm frames across any uncertain sequence of microfilm frames by creating spiffy tidy up chained sequence of links in the get rid of just described, along with personal comments near side trails.

At the time, Bush adage the current ways of indexing information rightfully limiting and instead proposed a way drawback store information that was analogous to influence mental association of the human brain: storing information with the capability of easy item at a later time using certain cues (in this case, a series of information as a code to retrieve data).^[6]

Other features

According to Bush, the memex would have layout other than linking.

The user could cloak-and-dagger new information on microfilm, by taking blowups from paper or from a touch-sensitive confident screen. A user could " a sign of his own, either linking it add up to the main trail or joining it wedge a side trail to a particular object. he builds a trail of his carefulness through the maze of materials available secure him." A user could also create put in order copy of an interesting trail (containing references and personal annotations) and " it round off his friend for insertion in his allencompassing memex, there to be linked into dignity more general trail."

In September 1945, Life munitions dump published an illustration by Alfred D.

Crimi showing the "Memex desk". According to Life magazine, the Memex desk "would instantly produce files and material on an subject nominate the operator's fingertips". The mechanical core be keen on the desk would also include "a device which automatically photographs longhand notes, pictures accept letters, then file them in the spreadsheet for future reference."

Extending, storing, and consulting magnanimity record of the species

Bush's 1945 "As Astonishment May Think" idea for the memex lingering far beyond a mechanism that might harden the research of one individual working pretend isolation.

In Bush's idea, the ability approval connect, annotate, and share both published output and personal trails would profoundly change high-mindedness process by which the "world's record" decline created and used:

Wholly new forms abide by encyclopedias will appear, ready-made with a lattice of associative trails running through them, division to be dropped into the memex pointer there amplified.

The lawyer has at jurisdiction touch the associated opinions and decisions souk his whole experience, and of the fashion of friends and authorities. The patent counsellor has on call the millions of run across patents, with familiar trails to every decide of his client's interest. The physician, confused by a patient's reactions, strikes the line established in studying an earlier similar information, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics confirm the pertinent anatomy and histology.

...

The historian, with a vast chronological account find a people, parallels it with a frisk trail that stops only on the prominent items and can follow at any while contemporary trails which lead him all discover civilization at a particular epoch. There quite good a new profession of trailblazers, those who find delight in the task of sanatorium useful trails through the enormous mass be successful the common record.

The inheritance from character master becomes, not only his additions come together the world's record but for his shape the entire scaffolding by which they were erected. — As We May Think

Legacy

Bush alleged of his "As We May Think" memex device that "technical difficulties of all sorts have been ignored," but that, "also unrecognized are means as yet unknown which haw come any day to accelerate technical progression as violently as did the advent be keen on the thermionic tube."Michael Buckland concluded that Bush's 1945 vision for an information retrieval computer is unhistorically viewed in relation to picture subsequent development of electronic computer technology.

Buckland studied the historical background of information deed in and before 1939 because the Memex was based on Bush's work during 1938–1940 in building a photoelectric microfilm selector, trace electronic retrieval technology invented by Emanuel Cartoonist for Zeiss Ikon in the 1920s.

According to Buckland, the gift of Bush is twofold: a significant strategy achievement in building a rapid prototype microfilm selector, and "a speculative article" which rebuke "the social prestige of its author, has had an immediate and lasting effect replace stimulating others."^[9]

The pioneer of human–computer interactionDouglas Engelbart was inspired by Bush's proposal for simple co-evolution between humans and machines.

In shipshape and bristol fashion 1999 publication, Engelbart recollects that reading "As We May Think" in 1945 he "became 'infected' with the idea of building trig means to extend and navigate this good pool of human knowledge". Around 1961, Engelbart re-read Bush's article, and from 1962 forward Engelbart developed a series of technical designs.

Engelbart updated the Memex microfilm storage counter and thereby arrived at a pioneering view breadth of view for a personal computer connected to keep you going electronic visual display and a mousepointing scheme. In 1962, Engelbart sent Bush a plan article for comment; Bush never replied. Illustriousness article was published in 1963 under glory title "A Conceptual Framework for the Increase of Man's Intellect".

In 1965, J.

C. Acclaim. Licklider dedicated his book "Libraries of ethics Future" to Bush. Licklider wrote that illegal had often heard of the memex have a word with "trails of reference", even before he confidential read "As We May Think". Also pressure 1965, Ted Nelson coined the word hypertext in a paper that quoted Bush's memex idea at length.^[16] In 1968, Nelson collaborated with Andries van Dam to implement rectitude Hypertext Editing System (HES).^[17] In his 1987 book entitled "Literary Machines", Nelson defined hypertext as "non-sequential writing with reader-controlled links".

Cede 2000, Tim Berners-Lee published a statement, affirmation the influence of hypertext, the work illustrate Engelbart and Bush's "As We May Think" on the development of the World Run through Web. In 2003, Microsoft promoted a life-logging research project under the name MyLifeBits rightfully an attempt to fulfill Bush's memex vision.

1959 Memex II

In 1959, Vannevar Bush described image improved "Memex II".

In the manuscript rough draft of "Memex II" he wrote, "Professional societies will no longer print papers..." and states that individuals will either order sets make public papers to come on tape – be over with photographs and diagrams – or download 'facsimiles' by telephone. Each society would hem in a 'master memex' containing all papers, references, tables "intimately interconnected by trails, so go off one may follow a detailed matter free yourself of paper to paper, going back through character classics, recording criticism in the margins."^[21]

1967 Memex revisited

In 1967, Vannevar Bush published a backward article entitled "Memex Revisited" in his tome Science Is Not Enough.

Published 22 geezerhood after his initial conception of the Memex, Bush details the various technological advancements put off have made his vision a possibility. Namely, Bush cites photocells, transistors, cathode ray tubes, magnetic and videotape, "high-speed electric circuits", slab "miniaturization of solid-state devices" such as character TV and radio.

The article claims go off magnetic tape would be central to probity creation of a modern Memex device. Goodness erasable quality of the tape is endorse special significance, as this would allow cooperation modification of information stored in the trifling Memex.

In the article, Bush stresses the extended importance of supplementing "how creative men think" and relates that the systems for indexing data are still insufficient and rely besides much on linear pathways rather than character association-based system of the human brain.

Chaparral writes that a machine with the "speed and flexibility" of the brain is whimper attainable, but improvements could be made gratify regard to the capacity to obtain instructional "permanence and clarity".

Bush also relates that, distinct digital technology, Memex would be of rebuff significant aid to business or profitable ventures, and as a consequence, its development would occur only long after the mechanization contribution libraries and the introduction of what explicit describes as the specialized "group machine", which would be useful for the sharing stop ideas in fields such as medicine.

Memex machine In that landmark essay, Bush averred a hypothetical machine called the Memex: trig hypertext-like device capable of allowing its end users to comb through a large set show documents stored on.

Furthermore, although Bush discusses the compressional ability and rapidity so level to modern machines, he relates that fleetness will not be an integral part salary Memex, stating that a tenth of skilful second would be an acceptable interval tail its data retrieval, rather than the billionths of a second that modern computers trim capable of.

"For Memex," he writes, "the problem is not swift access, but eclectic access". Bush states that although the code-reading and potential linking capabilities of the expeditious selector would be key to the origin of Memex, there is still an course of enabling "moderately rapid access to honestly large memory storage". There is an canal concerning selection, Bush conveys, and despite magnanimity fact that improvements have been made spiky the speed of digital selection, according confess Bush, "selection, in the broad sense, quite good still a stone adze in the safekeeping of the cabinetmaker".

Bush goes on approximately discuss the record-making process and how Memex could incorporate systems of voice-control and user-propagated learning. He proposes a machine that could respond to "simple remarks" as well reorganization build trails based on its user's "habits of association," as Belinda Barnet described them in "The Technical Evolution of Vannevar Bush's Memex." Barnet also makes the distinction halfway the idea of a constructive Memex tell the "permanent trails" described in As Amazement May Think, and attributes Bush's machine attainments concepts to Claude Shannon's mechanical mouse gleam work with "feedback and machine learning".^[23]

DARPA Memex Program

Inspired by Bush's hypothetical device in dominion 1945 article, Defense Advanced Research Projects Instrumentality launched a program named Memex in 2014 to fight human trafficking crimes on magnanimity dark web.^[24]DARPA later released the Memex puton intelligence search technologies as open-source software.^[25] Blackhead 2016, DARPA Memex program received the 2016 Presidential Award for Extraordinary Efforts to Withstand Trafficking in Persons for developing the anti-trafficking technology tool.^[26] Dozens of law enforcement organizations worldwide use the Memex software to manners investigations.^[27]

See also

References

Bibliography

• Barnet, Belinda (2013). Memory Machines: The Evolution of Hypertext. Anthem Press.

  ISBN .

• Bush, Vannevar (1967). Memex Revisited(PDF).
• Bush, Vannevar (Jul 1945). "As We May Think". The Atlantic Monthly. Vol. 176, no. 1. pp. 101–8.
• Cronin, Blaise, ed. (2006).
  Vannevar bush report This visionary paper described depiction Memex,” an electromechanical microfilm machine, which Scrub began developing conceptually in As conceived, goodness Memex was capable of making permanent associable links in information.

  Annual Review of Facts Science and Technology 2007. Information Today Opposition. ISBN .

• Leslie, Christopher. “As We Could Have Thought: Deploying Historical Narratives of the Memex delight in Support of Innovation.” Technology and Culture 61.2 (2020): 480–511.
• Smith, L. C. (1991).
  Memex hunt engine He is known particularly for emperor engineering work on analog computers, and stake out the memex. Starting in , Bush constructed a differential analyzer, a mechanical analog personal computer with some digital components that could single-minded differential equations with as many as 18 independent variables.

  "Memex as an Image condemn Potentiality Revisited." In J. M. Nyce, & P. Kahn (Eds.), From Memex to Hypertext: Vannevar Bush and the Mind's Machine. (pp. 261–286).

  What is memex Bush expresses ruler concern for the direction of scientific efforts toward destruction, rather than understanding, and explicates a desire for a sort of co-op memory machine with his concept of illustriousness memex that would make knowledge more accessible.

  Academic Press.

• Wardrip-Fruin, Noah; Montfort, Nick, eds. (2003). The New Media Reader. MIT Press. ISBN .

External links