Response to "As We May Think"

1. What is research like for Bush in 1945? What are the problems with it?

       According to the background of the year 1945, America was experiencing the World War II. All the scientists dedicate themselves to the scientific application to make the country stronger and to win the war. The research for Bush in 1945 is focused the information science. The new equipment developed from research not only helps people increase self-control, but also helps people to better understand the life process, which brings many long-term interests. People communicate with each other, and also utilize and extract information from information research.

There are some problems following the scientific research. First, the way of spreading and summarizing research conclusions is too antiquated to satisfy the society, so it’s hard for people to extract the significant result among a large number of things. Second, although the speed of people to gain the knowledge is rapidly increasing, people cannot remember everything. People are likely to be lost in the maze of knowledge. Third, most people at that time are not aware of the importance or the benefit of information science.

2.What is the memex?

       Memex is a kind of “private library” based on the microfilm where people can store all the books, records and communications. The mechanized system can record new information through Cyclops, Vocoder and touchscreen. Memex provides the connection between various data so that people are able to create links and to add their comments. Memex joins net with libraries to help people get the huge amount of information retrieval. Besides, memex reduces the storage space, accelerates the retrieval and expands the memory.

3.Do we have anything similar to the memex today?

       Bush’s idea about memex makes a great contribution to today’s world of technology. The hypertext is very similar to the Memex. Hypertext uses hyperlinks to organize a lot of different spatial data together. When we surf on the Internet, the webpage transition is achieved by the hypertext.

Tess/Tang Siwen