
As We May Think (1945) - branden
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1969/12/as-we-may-think/3881/
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dlg
This article was hugely important.

A radar operator named Doug Engelbart read this on the trip home from WWII. He
realized that the computer was the tool that would make this possible. He went
on and created everything from the mouse to lots of modern interactive
computing. Many of you may have seen his "mother of all demos". If not, watch
[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8734787622017763097...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8734787622017763097#)

That demo, in turn, influenced a generation of young computer scientists to
invent interactive computing. Notably Ted Nelson & Andries van Dam who created
hypertext and Alan Kay who, while at PARC, invented the desktop GUI and the
concepts for tablet computer.

I recommend reading "What the Dormouse Said" by Markoff for a history of that
era.

(I consider this the "NLS thread" of computer history. The other major
interactive thread is from PLATO to Ray Ozzie/NOTES to Mitch Kapor, et al.)

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MaysonL
Pick up a copy of Nelson's book: "Computer Lib/Dream Machines" for some more
fun history of the pre-PC era.

~~~
zandorg
I have signed copies of all Nelson's works but Future of Information. Not
boasting, but I love collecting books. The Home Computer Revolution (inscribed
"We haven't got to the future yet") is a stunning book, it predicts so many
things in 1977.

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ben1040
I first read this 15 years ago in high school, when a teacher of mine saw the
web first take hold and felt it important enough to photocopy this piece and
spend several days in class discussing it.

However, we had really only discussed the concept of hypertext and how it fit
with Bush's designs -- so much of the other concepts in the piece seem
dependent upon technology which was still "far off" when I first read it in
1995. Digital photography was still a curiosity too expensive to be
universally practical; I still spent lots of money getting film developed to
have pictures that now sit unindexed in shoeboxes. E-ink wouldn't exist for
several more years. Networked tablets were what Geordi LaForge carried around
on Star Trek, not what you could buy for a few hundred bucks and use to read
one of thousands of books while sitting at a bus stop. I would never expect
that speech recognition would get "good enough" that I could have voice
messages automatically transcribed and emailed to me.

It still blows my mind when Google Voice takes a voicemail and the transcript
appears on an app on my smartphone. I still have that kid in a candy store
feeling when reading a book on my iPad, or browsing all sorts of movies on
Netflix's streaming service. This stuff is all amazing and I hope I never take
it for granted.

~~~
kragen
_It still blows my mind when Google Voice takes a voicemail and the transcript
appears on an app on my smartphone._

Are you sure Google Voice transcribes all voicemail manually? There are call
centers in third-world countries where people transcribe USA voicemails, you
know.

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JeremyBanks
It's automatic:
[http://www.google.com/support/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://www.google.com/support/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=115986)

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blasdel
_When people write papers about New Media and The Web, they often cite
Vannevar Bush's 1945 article in The Atlantic, “As We May Think”. We had a 65th
anniversary panel about the paper at Hypertext 2010, at which I was the
designated heretic. My position is that Bush’s paper is essentially a popular
science article. It gets some things right, some wrong. It’s cavalier about
its sources – especially the very important work of Emanuel Goldberg, which
Bush knew and which was entirely forgotten by everyone in the field for fifty
years before Michael Buckland rediscovered it.

We can point to other precursors, too. H. G. Wells, for example, wrote The
World Brain before the War and tried hard to fund a foundation that would
manage an open-source microfilm encyclopedia of the world’s knowledge. But the
really astonishing prediction is not Bush’s but Murray Leinster’s 1946 short
story, “A Logic Name Joe”…_

<http://www.markbernstein.org/Jul10/ALogicNamedJoe.html>

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jacquesm
That's interesting stuff that I didn't have a clue about, thank you.

How do you know Bush was aware of Goldbergs work ?

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eastgate
a) Goldberg said he met with Bush and told him about it. b) Bush had a patent
application denied because of Goldberg's prior art.

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RiderOfGiraffes
An old favorite ...

<http://searchyc.com/submissions/as+we+may+think?sort=by_date>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006264>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=768498>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=70998>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21095>

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api
FYI: Vannevar Bush has no relation to George Bush I or II...

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Ardit20
does it matter?

~~~
Create
...only if it is repeated enough times.

