
As We May Think (1945) - benbreen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think
======
tygorius
This is one of those historic artifacts, like the Mother of All Demos, that
really brings home the sense of possibilities that people had for computers a
couple of generations back.

Back in 1995 MIT had a symposium with computing luminaries talking about the
impact his essay had on them. When I realized that people like Doug Engelbart,
Ted Nelson, Tim Berners-Lee, and Alan Kay gave talks, I realized this was
someone that I should have known about. Videos of the presentations are still
up at the Internet Archive and Engelbart's site has a list of the relevant
links: [http://www.dougengelbart.org/events/vannevar-bush-
symposium....](http://www.dougengelbart.org/events/vannevar-bush-
symposium.html)

Engelbart's site also has a PDF of his marked up copy of the essay from his
SRI days.

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benbreen
Text of the original article:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-
ma...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-
think/303881/)

------
Kenji
What a great read. Skip the Wikipedia article and read the original thing. We
still haven't fully realized all of his suggestions:

 _In the outside world, all forms of intelligence, whether of sound or sight,
have been reduced to the form of varying currents in an electric circuit in
order that they may be transmitted. Inside the human frame exactly the same
sort of process occurs. Must we always transform to mechanical movements in
order to proceed from one electrical phenomenon to another?_

I would love to see that as much as he did.

------
jeffbush
Someone I know built a working Memex:
[http://trevor.smith.name/memex/](http://trevor.smith.name/memex/)

~~~
vinchuco
[http://opencatalog.darpa.mil/MEMEX.html](http://opencatalog.darpa.mil/MEMEX.html)

~~~
DennisP
That doesn't seem all that related to Bush's Memex.

------
state
This is just such an incredible gem. Certainly required reading for everyone
on HN. The original, that is.

~~~
benbreen
I find Vannevar Bush so interesting. There's lots of good material about him
in the (excellent, albeit kind of depressing) Oppenheimer biography American
Prometheus:

[http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/13787/american-
prometheus/978...](http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/13787/american-
prometheus/9780375726262/)

~~~
dang
I always thought he was in the line of political Bushes, but apparently not. A
little Googling reveals that Vannevar is no more related to George than Kate.

~~~
dredmorbius
NB, articles such as this (and, frankly, quite a few others) _really_ make me
wish HN offered more metadata on posts. Title, author, and date, at the least.
A blurb as well (lede paragraph) perhaps. Microcontent matters.

Though avoiding editorializing becomes a challenge....

Bush _is_ among the particularly interesting tech pioneers.

