As intelligent as this man absolutely was there is something about his postwar mentality, that lives distaste in my mouth. It’s almost as he is smoking a foul smelling cigar, preaching about technology and patting those typing girls on the bottom for their good behavior.

To say that science replaced religion is hyperbolic but there is a way in which you can just see scientists making themselves into the monks/saints of the future.

One of those most telling quotes of this article is his comment, “It is strange that the inventors of universal languages have not seized upon the idea of producing one which better fitted the technique for transmitting and recording speech.”

Being a scientist he sees language as something made by inventors rather than a cultural production arising from necessity.

Bush’s readiness to thrust logical processes into the clanking levers of the machines he imagines seems tied with an extremely nationalistic progressive vision of technology and history. In his discussion he leaves little space for the independence of the human creativity, which he briefly touches on. These machines, to him, are not created by men (filled with the prejudice and flaws that mankind necessarily has) but rather seem to be created out of logic alone. Oh, and a little work on the scientists part.

“Whenever logical processes of thought are employed—that is, whenever thought for a time runs along an accepted groove—there is an opportunity for the machine,” argued Bush.

Since this is written on the morning after World War Two, it seems uncompressible to me that he does not discuss technology’s role in the “logical” murder of the Jews by the Germans. All of us are far to familiar with Hitler’s famous desire for living space that he claimed came out of a national logic. This distasteful logic, created a massive indexing system by IBM, that made it much easier to enact genocide than in the past. Here is a link for those of you unfamiliar with this http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/.

In short thought that “runs along an accepted groove” is often called mob mentality.

I would like to add that this man who can see into the future was unable to envision a world where women would be anything but girls typing away.

“One of them will take instructions and data from a whole roomful of girls armed with simple key board punches, and will deliver sheets of computed results every few minutes,” he writes.

Because in the old boys club, women are not endowed with logic so they were will never have a real role in cultural production other than typing. Puff. Puff.

“Mendel’s concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; and this sort of catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated all about us, as truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential.”

The solution the article proposes is a better, more efficient way for people to organize information they encounter. However this does not appear to solve the Mendel problem. There is no evidence that Mendel’s discoveries were ignored because those who had read about them could not remember them accurately. The problem was that not enough people came to appreciate the pea experiments. This is essentially a challenge of dissemination not recall.

As others have already observed, the “memex” system bears striking similarities to aspects of the internet and search engines that have become staples of modern information organization and gathering. But there is a key difference that Bush was unable to anticipate: the collaborative advantage of the internet. Google, for one, constantly aggregates the recommendations of all its users and the websites it searches to improve its results. In this way, a brilliant insight on the Web can pick up momentum as people who recognize its power pass it along and sites like Google give it increased importance. Ideally the notion is that one good thought can circulate the world, garnering the recognition it deserves.

But would this prevent a repetition of the Mendel scenario? I worry that it would not. The supposition now by many people is that important information will come to them. If it is not at the top of their Google search, in their e-mail inboxes or featured on nytimes.com, they feel it isn’t worth searching out. And that is obviously not true. The new threat is overconfidence in our information gathering abilities.

Bush comes across a remaining stumbling block when he remarks that the “clumsy way in which we have learned to write figures” has complicated the way we make calculations by machines. The complexity of language seems to be one factor technology still has yet to master. Though it does now exist, any widely distributed voice-recognition software I’ve used cannot be trusted to create an accurate record.

Bush should find the English system of spelling atrocious. Any software I’ve seen that vocalizes text horribly mispronounces our non-phoenetic words. And beyond that, it cannot convey the emotion present in the human voice.

Furthermore, there are so many languages in the world that many of them are left out when new technology is developed. Simple computing classes in other countries become part language lessons. People don’t always realize the considerable power of having the latest advancements and programs all available in your native tongue, of learning programming languages based on a language you already speak written in a script you’ve grown up reading.

Bush suggests a way around this: Eliminate the middleman. He writes, “The impulses which flow in the arm nerves of a typist convey to her fingers the translated information which reaches her eye or ear, in order that the fingers may be caused to strike the proper keys. Might not these currents be intercepted, either in the original form in which information is conveyed to the brain, or in the marvelously metamorphosed form in which they then proceed to the hand? …Must we always transform to mechanical movements in order to proceed from one electrical phenomenon to another?”

It’s far out, but would it ever be possible to communicate the full range of human thought without language? Such a thing could create greater mutual understanding and equality among all people. What would we lose?

His primitive model, I think, would have been useful in libriaries and schools, but I don’t think it would have been economically feasible to make that type of equipment at the time. Interestingly, he talks about economics and lack of resources being the cause of early computing machines failing. I think the same logic could be used to discount the necessity of the Memex machine.

Many are drawing comparisons between the Memex and the Internet. While there are certainly parallels between the two, such as calling up only pertinent information (through a search engine) or linking together similar topics, I think Bush leaves out one very important idea that has made the Internet thrive: the general public.

The Memex wouldn’t have been available to the general public because most probably didn’t have the funds to purchase their own libraries, let alone a machine to organize them. What makes the Internet successful is the sharing of information and the public input people can have on that information.

That’s the direction journalism is heading in as well. People want interactivity. What in the “old days” of journalism was writing a letter to the editor is now commenting on online stories or writing your own blog on the topic to provide opinion. It’s not just about producing multi-platform stories; it’s about allowing the user to interact with it.

At a very basic level, let the user e-mail it to a friend or link to it on Facebook. On other levels, provide them with a quiz to test their knowledge on the subject or a survey to gauge public interest. An example: On a story about a presidential debate, create a quiz that ranks which candidate the user most agrees with on certain issues. You could also link to maps to give the user a better picture of something, etc.

He touched on many inventions that exist today, although not necessarily exactly how he envisioned them. For example, “The camera hound of the future wears on his forehead a lump a little larger than a walnut. It takes pictures 3 millimeters square, later to be projected or enlarged, which after all involves only a factor of 10 beyond present practice,” sounds similar to a camera phone. Although not attached to our forehead, it is readily accessible and can be transferred to a computer capable of enlarging the picture.

Also, “Might not these currents be intercepted, either in the original form in which information is conveyed to the brain, or in the marvelously metamorphosed form in which they then proceed to the hand?” This sounds, to me, very much like the research that is happening now and is described in this article for Current Opinion in Neurobiology:, “Recent studies show that motor parameters, such as hand trajectory, and cognitive parameters, such as the goal and predicted value of an action, can be decoded from the recorded activity to provide control signals. Neural prosthetics that use simultaneously a variety of cognitive and motor signals can maximize the ability of patients to communicate and interact with the outside world.”

There is some truth to the theory that there is too much information for people to easily process, however, computers have made it much easier to find relevant scientific research, for example, than it was for Bush. Pub Med is a great tool for finding research that has been done on specific subject and linking to similar research papers.

Bush was dead-on when he said, “[Man] has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his records more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion and not merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited memory.” However, the technologies Bush mentions, most of which we have today, push us toward another extreme. We now have so much information at our fingertips that we are bogged down by our reliance on our mechanized records.

Ask the average cell phone user how many numbers in his contacts list are memorized. They will probably be able to rattle off a handful out of hundreds. Countless times my friends have sent Facebook messages begging for the phone number of everyone they ever knew because they broke or lost their old phone. Bush is correct that advancing technology has allowed us the “privilege of forgetting,” but I fear we are now abusing that privilege by replacing our natural memories with our computers and calculators.

Bush says, “The applications of science have built man a well-supplied house, and are teaching him to live healthily therein.” I would have to disagree. Our heavy-handed use is becoming borderline gluttonous. I see society taking advantage of science like a child with a sweet tooth locked in a candy store overnight. As good as it is, backlash will occur, be it a stomach ache for the child or increasing dependence on artificial memory for society. It is lovely not to have to remember a phone number every once in a while, but sometimes I miss my computer from back in the day: my brain.

Bush writes that “man’s spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems… His excursions may be more enjoyable if he can reacquire the privilege of forgetting the manifold things he does not need to have immediately at hand, with some assurance that he can find them again if they prove important.”

Two things alarm me about this passage. First, the web has served as a democratizing force by giving people the opportunity to be heard, yet the voices we hear and read on the web are becoming increasingly anonymous. What we’ve gained by opening up the floor to everyone, we’ve perhaps lost in accountability. Though we enjoy broader access to information about our “shady past … and …present problems” I fear we may soon lose our ability to attribute value to these pieces of information.

Second, I feel the diffusion of information on the web, and the assurance that it can be retrieved again at the click of a mouse, has indeed allowed us the “privilige of forgetting.” But I wonder if by doing so we are advancing the degeneration of a critical function of our brains, long-term memory. If we think non-linearly, do we not tend to forget how we got from point A to point B? If you don’t exercise a body part, it will wither and die. I feel I am better informed about the world around me, but I fear one side effect of this is my lackadaisical hippocampus.

Bush was dead-on with his commentary that there is so much information out there in the world but so little of it gets retrieved. He used science to make his point here. Data must be consulted and “continuously extended” when doing scientific research. The scientist needs to read up on previous works so as not to duplicate someone else’s efforts, and then add on his findings to the pool of research.

Bush noted that the primary problem with accessing the information is how people select the information. The indexing system doesn’t work so well because the human brain works via association – much like following links from Web page to Web page. You can click on a link for dessert recipes, then move to comments about a dessert and then view pictures of it on another page.

Cathy’s comment about nonlinear thinking made me think about the things my newspaper design professor used to say in undergrad. As print majors, we all thought the optimum way of telling a story was to write it. Wrong! Nonlinear storytelling gives readers multiple entry points into a story. Instead of reading it from start to finish, they can start with the photo and then listen to an audio sidebar and look at an infographic. This interactive form of storytelling allows the viewer to decide what they want to look at, instead of forcing them to follow a set story path. The viewer is able to take away what they want from the story.

I know technology will continue to progress, but I wonder – like others in this class – where does it end? Even as I type this I know the answer is likely: never. When we have reached the highest form of perfection with digital photography, what will be its replacement? I am sure it is being developed in a lab somewhere. Will people continue to jump on the band-wagon of whatever new technology comes out? iPhone anyone? My computer I bought for class at Medill has “blue ray disc technology” – I don’t even know what that means, but I am guessing its replacement is already trickling down the assembly line.

In the age of newer, better, faster, stronger – will we ever be satisfied? Could Bush have predicted this? If he thought there was too much information then, what would he say now? Now that there is so much information that people find it perfectly acceptable to live an apathetic life. Literally turning away from world news, presidential elections and disasters because it is all so bad they just don’t want to know.

If Bush thought his world was too disorganized to be effective I shudder to think of his reaction now. You can find news told in any way you want to hear (from any viewpoint you want to believe) and Web blogs on any topic under the sun giving you information that may or may not be truth. While I praise free speech and the ability of anyone now to make their voice heard – how much is too much? Have we so much choice that we can no longer see?