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Section 1
Bush argues that physicists are the scientists who have been most changed by their wartime experiences. [Comment: this first section seems a bit confused -- it's not clear what he's getting at, or what it has to do with the rest of the paper.]
Science [and technology?] is great but we are in danger of being swamped by the increasing mountain of knowledge. "Professionally our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purpose". Goes on to cite examples. Ends by hinting that new technologies may have something to offer us in this context. Much of the discussion of technology (e.g. 'dry photography') is completely out of date.
More discussion of technology -- for example the question of whether speech-driven machines will eventually replace secretaries and typewriters. But Bush anticipates many of the things that are nowadays becoming commonplace -- scanning of documents, voice-input and multi-media 'documents' in which text, video and audio are embedded. In the main, Bush envisages the necessary operations being done by mechanical devices though at the end of the section he anticipates the advent of digital computers -- viewed as calculators.
Here Bush envisages machines capable of analysing large quantities of data. Interesting to see that he expresses towards the end of the section some of the ideas that JCR Licklider expressed in his seminal paper on 'Man-Computer Symbiosis'.
Bush says that mechanical augmentation of human abilities to add to the record -- the increasing amount of information -- will just create bigger headaches. "So much for the manipulation of ideas and their insertion into the record. Thus far we seem to be worse off than before -- for we can enormously extend the record; yet even in its present bulk we can hardly consult it". He's now moving in on his real concern -- how can we manage the information explosion we are creating. "There may be millions of fine thoughts... but if the scholar can get at only one a week by diligent search, his syntheses are not likely to keep up with the current scene." Discusses the data-processing needs of organisations like department stores. But he is still thinking in mechanical terms. 'Rapid selection' of records from masses of cards has been an obsession of his since the mid-1930s.
Now we are moving closer to the heart of the matter. Bush thinks that "our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing". He discusses the various methods of indexing then commonly in use and then asserts that the human mind does not index in the same way. The human mind, he says, "operates by association. With one term in its grasp it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web [note the term] of trails carried by the cells of the brain". He doesn't think that this kind of 'associative linking' can be replicated mechanically (he's right) but he thinks we might be able to learn from it nevertheless. He expresses the hope that "selection by association, rather than by indexing, may yet be mechanized". At this point he introduces the hypothetical machine he calls the 'Memex'. He describes it in terms of a desk inside which is stored vast quantities of information recorded on microfilm. On top of the desk are two plates ('platen') which have special properties. (In modern terms they are a combination of scanner and screen.) Things can be scanned directly onto microfilm. Individual records can be found using conventional indexing systems. "If the user wishes to consult a certain book, he taps its code on the keyboard, and the title page of the book promptly appears before him'. If the user wihes to browse through records, a lever can speed up or slow down the rate at which records are flipped through. (The modern analogy is the scroll bar on a screen.) Having found a record, the user can annotate it.
Now Bush moves to the really prescient part of his essay -- his vision of a facility to create what we would call hyperlinks between two records. The key paragraphs are the ones beginning "When the user is building a trail...", and "Thereafter, at any time...". He goes on to give an illustration of what an 'associative trail' would be like. Strip away all the old-fashioned mechanical technology, all the talk about levers and microfilm and the like, and here is a blueprint for the Web!
Bush moves on to envisage applications of his Memex idea -- new kinds of encyclopedias, legal databases, patent and medical libraries and "a new profession of trailblazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record". And to the notion that one thing a teacher ('master') can contribute is the scaffolding of trails which, which his expertise, he has created.