‘..The time to construct Vannevar’s memex has now come.’
Posted : May 4, 2004 at 7:32 pm [America/Los_Angeles]
Ok, I learnt another new term today:
memex
<hypertext> Vannevar Bush’s original name for hypertext, which he invented in the 1930s.
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Vannevar Bush first wrote of the device he called the memex early in the 1930s. However, it was not until 1945 that his essay “As We May Think” was published in Atlantic Monthly. The frequency with which this article has been cited in hypertext research attests to its importance.
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The memex is “a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility”
So, why do you care you ask? As Rajesh Jain rather eloquently puts it in his article:
In the past few years, various technologies like weblogs, RSS, OPML, web services, Google’s API, visualization tools and social software, combined with a deeper understanding of the science of networks have laid the foundation for leveraging individual intellect to put together a information framework that is far beyond the capacity of any person or organization. The time for constructing the Memex has now come
I think he might be on to something.
- Anand
Category: Services and Software