But it’s all analog. He wrote this just a couple of years too early. This piece just barely predates the digital age, pioneered by the fathers of computer science, Bush’s contemporaries, like Alan Turing, John von Neumann, and lots of other smart cats who spent the war years whipping up nuclear weaponry and building devices to crack Nazi codes.

He scratches at the surface a stored-program computer when he describes machines that “will be controlled by a control card or film, they will select their own data and manipulate it in accordance with the instructions thus inserted.” Perhaps he was in the know? So close.

But, he got something that the guys over at Yahoo! missed 50 years later, “the artificiality of systems of indexing.” There’s only so much value one gets from organizing. We need search! Add in hyperlinks, and you get Google, a search engine based on the concept that the usefulness of a pages is correlated to the quality and quantity of incoming links.

The world’s information seems poorly organized, but thats a myopic vision. It appears to be such a mess because of two factors. First, vastly more information is available to us online than ever before. Second, we’ve just begun sorting it out, and so we’re a bit behind the wave. But, the world’s information is far more organized and accessible than ever before, and every day new resources are made available to help us make sense of it.

I think this essay also makes a point about how people have (hopefully) learned their lesson when it comes to guessing what the future might be like. From Bush’s descriptions of how these future devices might work, its made plain how even the smartest scientists are bound by extent of their experience. He got the concepts and goals of our current technological revolutions, but I’m still waiting for the walnut on my forehead that takes pictures. Apple is probably working on it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: the computer. While Bush’s ideas may have been considered lofty or unrealistic at the time he had this article published, the devices we have come up with since this article are exactly what he was looking for. Digital cameras and camcorders operate hand-in-hand with computers via a “control card”.

We have printer/scanner/copier/fax machine/latte makers now that also work along with our computers. And despite its vastness, the Web is the most centralized location for all of the information Bush was talking about. Think about all of the resources we can get, just “armed with simple key board punches”.

The development of the personal computer alone has made the world we live in a smaller place, and I think if Bush was around today, he’d have an addiction to Youtube.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

We have come a long way in 63 years, and I think this guy would probably mess himself if he saw Youtube.

On the internet, or in a blog, the connections made are associative, as well as through indexing. The liberal use of hyperlinks in a lot of online journalism effectively creates a “trail of many items,” allowing readers to learn more about certain concepts or words while still in the framework of the original article. By putting these links in the text, the writer allows readers to choose the trails they’ll follow. As Bush said: “Thus [the writer] builds a trail of interest through the maze of materials available to him.”

If he were still around today, Bush would definitely be blogging.

It surprises me that point was made in 1945, I would have thought that there would have been LESS information to deal with then. Now, there is sometimes so much information, that making sense of it all can be a challenge.

The second quote that stood out to me was when he mentioned that “publication has been extended far beyond the ability to make use of the record.” It brings up a point that people tend to write so many things that they tend to lose the goal of making each point meaningful.

Echoing the sentiments made by rknowles, this article reinforces the point that quality should always trump quantity. A lesson that should hold true in our blog postings.

I think his ideas on how information will be indexed, etc is close to what we have now, but I think we well always have too much information that it will be almost impossible to organize as he imagines. And not because the organization method is poor.

What’s amazing is that even as we get closer to achieving the future devices Bush writes about, none of the old technological ways are entirely obsolete. I still record my thoughts with pencil and paper, even though I have my laptop. I took a course on photography and developed film in a dark room and know others who still do. And I still find myself, at times, unable to find anything I want on the internet.

In any case, the article served to reinforce the importance of quality over quantity as we set about blogging. As crucial as it will be to post frequently, it will be equally important to consider the real contribution each post makes.