I found an article by Mike Sherman called "Text Technologies: The Changing Spaces of Reading and Writing." In this article, Sherman not only mentions Bush, but also Bolter and Nelson, incorporating their contribution to the memex. He says that he clearly had ideas that were very ahead of our time, almost 50 years ahead. In my opinion, it is crazy to think someone had this vision and it actually came true so many years later, almost just like Bush saw it.
He comments that what Bush failed to see was the importance of networking and how it would be crucial in this invention. Bush saw each individual working in isolation, though we can see today that the internet has power by connecting everyone, everywhere and allowing us to share a wealth of knowledgable material. The other thing Bush missed, according to Sherman, is he overestimated the amount of storage that such a device was able to use. Though his idea of the memex became reality down the road, this storage he envisioned was not possible until many years later.
http://courses.educ.ubc.ca/etec540/May08/shermanm/commentary2.html
I also found this YouTube video that demonstrates Bush's idea of the memex that I thought was interesting to watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c539cK58ees
Hi Ciara,
ReplyDeleteI watched the video you recommended and I found it very interesting. I liked how they walked through the example of the encyclopedia article and then cross referencing it and adding your own notes. It helped me to understand Bush's thought process because I believe mine would have been different from his. Finally, I liked your commentary about networking and I agree that it may have altered his vision.