[{"_1":2,"_2611":-5,"_2612":-5},"loaderData",{"_3":4,"_18":19},"root",{"_5":6,"_7":6,"_8":9,"_10":11,"_12":13,"_14":15,"_16":17},"isProd",true,"enableStats","domain","hyper.media","siteHost","ui-with-state-machines.hyper.media","sentryTrace","3c7782fec2c24295b9217b26b9b2562f--0","sentryBaggage","sentry-environment=production,sentry-trace_id=3c7782fec2c24295b9217b26b9b2562f,sentry-sampled=false","remixVersion",2,"routes/$",{"_20":21,"_2524":2525},"json",{"_22":23,"_24":25,"_26":-5,"_27":-5,"_28":-5,"_29":30,"_31":-5,"_32":33,"_842":6,"_43":843,"_854":855,"_856":857,"_2511":2512,"_2513":30,"_10":2514,"_2515":2514,"_2516":2517,"_2519":2520},"prefersLanguages",[],"viewTerm","collaborators","panelParam","openComment","accountUid","isInspect",false,"inspectTab","document",{"_34":35,"_818":46,"_819":820,"_821":822,"_824":825,"_826":827,"_828":827,"_829":830,"_833":834,"_835":46,"_836":837,"_840":841},"content",[36,55,63,70,77,84,91,98,105,112,119,126,133,143,150,157,164,180,194,208,215,222,229,235,242,249,256,263,312,417,564,592,599,606,613,620,627,662,670,677,684,691,698,754,761],{"_37":38,"_39":40},"children",[],"block",{"_41":42,"_43":44,"_45":46,"_47":48,"_49":50,"_51":52,"_53":54},"type","Paragraph","id","QQnpcIHS","revision","bafy2bzacecch5uwnt26x7dklj2wsiozscxmqoyev5may4dvqmc6nb5kqhly7k","attributes",{},"annotations",[],"text","Theodor H. Nelson\nThis paper was presented at the International Conference on online interactive computing held at Brunei University, Uxbridge, England, September 4-7,1972.","link","",{"_37":56,"_39":57},[],{"_41":58,"_43":59,"_45":46,"_47":60,"_49":61,"_51":62,"_53":54},"Heading","XQLzQI6D",{},[],"Abstract",{"_37":64,"_39":65},[],{"_41":42,"_43":66,"_45":46,"_47":67,"_49":68,"_51":69,"_53":54},"gNCUISFe",{},[],"Bush was right. His famous article is, however, generally misinterpreted, for it has little to do with \"information retrieval\" as prosecuted today. Bush rejected indexing and discussed instead new forms of interwoven documents.",{"_37":71,"_39":72},[],{"_41":42,"_43":73,"_45":46,"_47":74,"_49":75,"_51":76,"_53":54},"N2CzMsHM",{},[],"It is possible that Bush's vision will be fulfilled substantially as he saw it, and that information retrieval systems of the kinds now popular will see less use than anticipated.",{"_37":78,"_39":79},[],{"_41":42,"_43":80,"_45":46,"_47":81,"_49":82,"_51":83,"_53":54},"G2mKHD0A",{},[],"As the technological base has changed, we must recast his thesis slightly, and regard Bush's \"memex\" as three things: the personal presentation, editing and file console; a digital feeder network for the delivery of documents in full-text digital form; and new types of documents, or hypertexts, which are especially worth receiving and sending in this manner.",{"_37":85,"_39":86},[],{"_41":42,"_43":87,"_45":46,"_47":88,"_49":89,"_51":90,"_53":54},"ZV011Qi9",{},[],"In addition, we also consider a likely design for specialist hypertexts, and discuss problems of their publication.",{"_37":92,"_39":93},[],{"_41":58,"_43":94,"_45":46,"_47":95,"_49":96,"_51":97,"_53":54},"txHq26eE",{},[],"Beating Around the Bush",{"_37":99,"_39":100},[],{"_41":42,"_43":101,"_45":46,"_47":102,"_49":103,"_51":104,"_53":54},"KRDSg6M6",{},[],"Twenty-seven years ago, in a widely acclaimed article, Vannevar Bush made certain predictions about the way we of the future would handle written information (1). We are not yet doing so. Yet the Bush article is often cited as the historical beginning, or as a technological watershed, of the field of information retrieval. It is frequently cited without interpretation (2,3). Although some commentators have said its predictions were improbable (4), in general its precepts have been ignored by acclamation.",{"_37":106,"_39":107},[],{"_41":42,"_43":108,"_45":46,"_47":109,"_49":110,"_51":111,"_53":54},"HXVjZdSV",{},[],"In this paper, an effort in counter-discipleship, I hope to remind readers of what Bush did and did not say, and point out what is not yet recognized: that much of what he predicted is possible now; the memex is here; the \"trails\" he spoke of—suitably generalized, and now called hypertexts—may, and should, become the principal publishing form of the future.",{"_37":113,"_39":114},[],{"_41":42,"_43":115,"_45":46,"_47":116,"_49":117,"_51":118,"_53":54},"eVkhIxCG",{},[],"In July of 1945 an article entitled \"As We May Think,\" by Vannevar Bush, was published in the Atlantic Monthly. It bristled with technical references but was actually fairly candid and simple.",{"_37":120,"_39":121},[],{"_41":42,"_43":122,"_45":46,"_47":123,"_49":124,"_51":125,"_53":54},"LBWp1Zqo",{},[],"It predicted many things. Bush, as director of Roosevelt's wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development, had seen the new ways in which technologies could be combined. In the urbane paragraphs of this article, Bush predicted a variety of useful future machines, including improvements in photography, facsimile systems, computers and miscellany. Depending on how you read it, he predicted, as well as you could hope, devices closely related to the Polaroid camera, the Xerox machine, computer transformation of mathematical expressions, and the telephone company's ESS switching system.",{"_37":127,"_39":128},[],{"_41":42,"_43":129,"_45":46,"_47":130,"_49":131,"_51":132,"_53":54},"dbHrGh9m",{},[],"But the article is best remembered for its description of the new ways that scientists and scholars could handle and share their ideas, writing, reading and filing in a magical system at their desks. The system is the famous \"memex.\"",{"_37":134,"_39":135},[],{"_41":136,"_43":137,"_45":46,"_47":138,"_49":141,"_51":54,"_53":142},"Embed","Osvz_xGC",{"_139":140},"view","Content",[],"hm://z6MkrbYsRzKb1VABdvhsDSAk6JK8fAszKsyHhcaZigYeWCou/as-we-may-think?v=bafy2bzaceaqvup7xqozrjgf5aadd7ud7bey44u5zmekpj3w76qscejbnnc4gy#AqGRgRAh",{"_37":144,"_39":145},[],{"_41":136,"_43":146,"_45":46,"_47":147,"_49":148,"_51":54,"_53":149},"iTALYgzT",{"_139":140},[],"hm://z6MkrbYsRzKb1VABdvhsDSAk6JK8fAszKsyHhcaZigYeWCou/as-we-may-think?v=bafy2bzaceaqvup7xqozrjgf5aadd7ud7bey44u5zmekpj3w76qscejbnnc4gy#TfWCAxXp",{"_37":151,"_39":152},[],{"_41":42,"_43":153,"_45":46,"_47":154,"_49":155,"_51":156,"_53":54},"Y5L1E35K",{},[],"The memex will hold all the writings its master wants to read, and he can read them easily.",{"_37":158,"_39":159},[],{"_41":136,"_43":160,"_45":46,"_47":161,"_49":162,"_51":54,"_53":163},"EfyNN9um",{"_139":140},[],"hm://z6MkrbYsRzKb1VABdvhsDSAk6JK8fAszKsyHhcaZigYeWCou/as-we-may-think?v=bafy2bzaceaqvup7xqozrjgf5aadd7ud7bey44u5zmekpj3w76qscejbnnc4gy#3lraYLjj",{"_37":165,"_39":173},[166],{"_37":167,"_39":168},[],{"_41":136,"_43":169,"_45":46,"_47":170,"_49":171,"_51":54,"_53":172},"Zy29M0BN",{"_139":140},[],"hm://z6MkrbYsRzKb1VABdvhsDSAk6JK8fAszKsyHhcaZigYeWCou/as-we-may-think?v=bafy2bzaceaqvup7xqozrjgf5aadd7ud7bey44u5zmekpj3w76qscejbnnc4gy#EN57UWfJ",{"_41":42,"_43":174,"_45":46,"_47":175,"_49":178,"_51":179,"_53":54},"hn9y-2-Y",{"_176":177},"childrenType","Group",[],"Moreover, he can compare and annotate them.",{"_37":181,"_39":189},[182],{"_37":183,"_39":184},[],{"_41":136,"_43":185,"_45":46,"_47":186,"_49":187,"_51":54,"_53":188},"SJDERbDF",{"_139":140},[],"hm://z6MkrbYsRzKb1VABdvhsDSAk6JK8fAszKsyHhcaZigYeWCou/as-we-may-think?v=bafy2bzaceaqvup7xqozrjgf5aadd7ud7bey44u5zmekpj3w76qscejbnnc4gy#TlXiaXp1",{"_41":42,"_43":190,"_45":46,"_47":191,"_49":192,"_51":193,"_53":54},"u-YHRstV",{"_176":177},[],"Not only ordinary documents need be held in the memex. The user may make connections between different parts of the things stored. He does this by ",{"_37":195,"_39":203},[196],{"_37":197,"_39":198},[],{"_41":136,"_43":199,"_45":46,"_47":200,"_49":201,"_51":54,"_53":202},"V0bfhFCG",{"_139":140},[],"hm://z6MkrbYsRzKb1VABdvhsDSAk6JK8fAszKsyHhcaZigYeWCou/as-we-may-think?v=bafy2bzaceaqvup7xqozrjgf5aadd7ud7bey44u5zmekpj3w76qscejbnnc4gy#aJ5f5jF5",{"_41":42,"_43":204,"_45":46,"_47":205,"_49":206,"_51":207,"_53":54},"UN8-5owL",{"_176":177},[],"By this associative technique he may create \"trails,\" new documentary objects that are useful in new ways.",{"_37":209,"_39":210},[],{"_41":42,"_43":211,"_45":46,"_47":212,"_49":213,"_51":214,"_53":54},"0qS5JIc9",{},[],"These new structures, or trails, may be taken and given to other people.",{"_37":216,"_39":217},[],{"_41":136,"_43":218,"_45":46,"_47":219,"_49":220,"_51":54,"_53":221},"Qh5Esiow",{"_139":140},[],"hm://z6MkrbYsRzKb1VABdvhsDSAk6JK8fAszKsyHhcaZigYeWCou/as-we-may-think?v=bafy2bzaceaqvup7xqozrjgf5aadd7ud7bey44u5zmekpj3w76qscejbnnc4gy#DAwmGiOq",{"_37":223,"_39":224},[],{"_41":42,"_43":225,"_45":46,"_47":226,"_49":227,"_51":228,"_53":54},"IySC15lW",{},[],"And they may be published.",{"_37":230,"_39":231},[],{"_41":136,"_43":232,"_45":46,"_47":233,"_49":234,"_51":54,"_53":202},"AYnznU_y",{"_139":140},[],{"_37":236,"_39":237},[],{"_41":42,"_43":238,"_45":46,"_47":239,"_49":240,"_51":241,"_53":54},"frKQTh2a",{},[],"It is strange that \"As We May Think\" has been taken so to heart in the field of information retrieval, since it runs counter to virtually all work being pursued under the name of information retrieval today. Such systems are principally concerned either with indexing conventional documents by content, or with somehow representing that content in a way that can be mechanically searched and deciphered.",{"_37":243,"_39":244},[],{"_41":42,"_43":245,"_45":46,"_47":246,"_49":247,"_51":248,"_53":54},"2q1LvZDy",{},[],"This is indeed paradoxical. On the one hand, Bush did not think well of indexing.",{"_37":250,"_39":251},[],{"_41":136,"_43":252,"_45":46,"_47":253,"_49":254,"_51":54,"_53":255},"aYi-2PDe",{"_139":140},[],"hm://z6MkrbYsRzKb1VABdvhsDSAk6JK8fAszKsyHhcaZigYeWCou/as-we-may-think?v=bafy2bzaceaqvup7xqozrjgf5aadd7ud7bey44u5zmekpj3w76qscejbnnc4gy#-UV4qKcD",{"_37":257,"_39":258},[],{"_41":42,"_43":259,"_45":46,"_47":260,"_49":261,"_51":262,"_53":54},"xv7hjJiW",{},[],"On the other hand, with regard to content retrieval. Bush merely hinted about the use of structured-data representations and calculi in storing ideas (105, col. 2, para. 3), and did not plainly relate them to his mail exposition. The reason is plain: his real emphasis was on linkage, an£ new structures and activities that the automatic link-jump would mak( possible. While we might argue scripture about such matters, the fact L that Bush's most extensive concern has had few successors in the fielf called \"information retrieval.\"",{"_37":264,"_39":307},[265,272,279,286,293,300],{"_37":266,"_39":267},[],{"_41":42,"_43":268,"_45":46,"_47":269,"_49":270,"_51":271,"_53":54},"QtWm_YHF",{},[],"The memex was to be a single screen console for handling the user's notes, writing and correspondence, for reading books and other writ¬ ings created by others, and for creating new associative text structures, which may in their turn be read and distributed. All this I take to be the heart of Bush's prediction. This will happen. Such systems exist; they are approaching cost feasibility; and the world is readier than it thinks.",{"_37":273,"_39":274},[],{"_41":42,"_43":275,"_45":46,"_47":276,"_49":277,"_51":278,"_53":54},"YDPO9Awd",{},[],"Bush's machine will not, of course, be built exactly as he foresaw. The complete description, which I omitted, involves microfilm cas¬ settes, a photographic copying plate for adding new images to the microfilm file, and a telautograph stylus. Other machines he describes, such as the forehead camera and the direct-dictation typing machine, might or might not have been coupled to it as well. In the revised version of the article (5) his emphasis shifted to videotape. These impedimenta we ignore. There exist microfilm cassettes, copiers and so on, but the hardware ready to support a memex-class system will be something else.",{"_37":280,"_39":281},[],{"_41":42,"_43":282,"_45":46,"_47":283,"_49":284,"_51":285,"_53":54},"uhwoRLHW",{},[],"The system will be built from existing computer equipment and peripherals. Physically it will be a computer display, with a keyboard, at the user's desk; a support computer system (at the desk or elsewhere) for handling various technical chores; and a library network of digital feeder machines. The written materials, when not shown on the screen, will be stored and sent digitally, as telegraphic symbolg.’They will be sent back and forth among these systems automatically, as programmed in the various devices. The trails, or associative text structures—more generally called \"hypertexts\"—will be stored in coded form, along with, the more conventional documents in the various devices. The user will be billed automatically for the services and the delivery of copyrighted materials. The publisher, who maintains these copyrighted materials in the feeder machines, will be duly paid for their use.",{"_37":287,"_39":288},[],{"_41":42,"_43":289,"_45":46,"_47":290,"_49":291,"_51":292,"_53":54},"rjFINwnJ",{},[],"Prototype units exist now. Appropriate console hardware can be purchased now for about $15,000.",{"_37":294,"_39":295},[],{"_41":42,"_43":296,"_45":46,"_47":297,"_49":298,"_51":299,"_53":54},"MpSmGT1C",{},[],"Supply systems, however, are not quite ready. The best supply system may be a special-purpose computer or a general-purpose time¬ sharing pyitem; which is better is not clear. While costs of either are presently in thi tSAB or hundreds of thousands, they are coming down fast, and the use of a well-tailored system by many people at once should bring down the cost of such service down considerably. To name a figure arbitrarily, let us say that a service cost of $100 a month per user (exclusive of telephone lines and copyright) would be suffi¬ ciently low to draw many users. Such service at such a cost will surely be generally available between one and five years from now.",{"_37":301,"_39":302},[],{"_41":42,"_43":303,"_45":46,"_47":304,"_49":305,"_51":306,"_53":54},"kZrOy0ql",{},[],"Various preoccupations have delayed us psychologically. We do not need direct dictation, optical scanning or the availability (sic) of vast libraries for such systems to be immediately practical and important to us.",{"_41":58,"_43":308,"_45":46,"_47":309,"_49":310,"_51":311,"_53":54},"M0VjGRF0",{"_176":177},[],"Transposition",{"_37":313,"_39":412},[314,321,328,335,342,349,356,363,370,384,391,398,405],{"_37":315,"_39":316},[],{"_41":42,"_43":317,"_45":46,"_47":318,"_49":319,"_51":320,"_53":54},"yRCt0hCQ",{},[],"We are speaking of a single console to handle notes, writing, much correspondence, much reading, and the creation of new kinds of texts. On it the user must be able to view, edit, file, and otherwise manipulate.",{"_37":322,"_39":323},[],{"_41":42,"_43":324,"_45":46,"_47":325,"_49":326,"_51":327,"_53":54},"uD8XLQ64",{},[],"Let me now describe a system for various kinds of text handling, the Xanadu Parallel Textface™. XANADU™ is a system presently under development as a turnkey computer graphics console for non-technical users. A stand-alone system, it is built on a minicomputer with disk and / or cassette tape, vectoring display screen, and keyboard. A variety of unusual programming techniques permit various types of screen animation, as well as automatic retrieval and data-base editing in the undersystem; these automatically service different user front ends, faces or theaters. Foremost among these theaters is the Parallel Textface, a text system of some power and delicacy.",{"_37":329,"_39":330},[],{"_41":42,"_43":331,"_45":46,"_47":332,"_49":333,"_51":334,"_53":54},"30jJW2pE",{},[],"Many of its features exist in other text handling systems, notably that of Douglas C. Engelbart at Stanford Research Institute (6). The purpose of this description is to show parallelisms between memex and this general type of system, not to distinguish this system from its relatives.",{"_37":336,"_39":337},[],{"_41":42,"_43":338,"_45":46,"_47":339,"_49":340,"_51":341,"_53":54},"60pYAt72",{},[],"I will speak of the Xanadu hypertext system, or Parallel Textface, simply as \"the system,\" \"the current system\" or the like, to distinguish it from the memex. As its implementation is not yet complete, this description applies to the present specifications and not only the parts that are working. We will note some resemblances to the memex.",{"_37":343,"_39":344},[],{"_41":42,"_43":345,"_45":46,"_47":346,"_49":347,"_51":348,"_53":54},"nALZJw6b",{},[],"The user sits at a display screen with a typewriter keyboard, a light pen or other pointing tool, and various optional controls. With these he may read, explore, annotate, write and revise. Storage is of course digital rather than pictorial; the system may manipulate the words letter by letter, rather than as a single image.",{"_37":350,"_39":351},[],{"_41":42,"_43":352,"_45":46,"_47":353,"_49":354,"_51":355,"_53":54},"wnSELNQB",{},[],"In basic editorial operations, the system presents text materials on the screen; the user may command basic writing and editing actions by simple manipulations. Indeed, he may make these editorial changes tentatively, on copies or alternative versions of the material; and he may, at his option, have his actions recorded automatically in a cumu¬ lative editorial log, in case it is later necessary to retract any of them.",{"_37":357,"_39":358},[],{"_41":42,"_43":359,"_45":46,"_47":360,"_49":361,"_51":362,"_53":54},"Yf16Esb5",{},[],"Bush did not really go into memex editorial operations, but of course there was that keyboard. It is interesting to note that the memex described in the revised version of Bush's article (5) kept a log of manipulations by the user. (95-6)",{"_37":364,"_39":365},[],{"_41":42,"_43":366,"_45":46,"_47":367,"_49":368,"_51":369,"_53":54},"GTnHIVqA",{},[],"The system is generally geared to tentative and thoughtful opera¬ tion. The alternative versions and editorial log are the strongest ex¬ amples, but there are others. An editing command may be retracted if its results do not please. Another example: a section of text being tried in a new place is shown glowing more brightly, so you know its limits within the new setting.",{"_37":371,"_39":379},[372],{"_37":373,"_39":374},[],{"_41":42,"_43":375,"_45":46,"_47":376,"_49":377,"_51":378,"_53":54},"DUCET99r",{},[],"In the memex, the user could skip through a document at adjustable rates (107, col. 1, para. 5). In the current system he may zip forward through the text at whatever speed he chooses, watching it slide on the screen. (The necessity of smooth, incremental text motion for the CRT is not yet generally recognized.)",{"_41":42,"_43":380,"_45":46,"_47":381,"_49":382,"_51":383,"_53":54},"Jg93zaTs",{"_176":177},[],"The user of Bush's memex called its contents by means of a \"code book\" (107 passim )—but this too was actually stored in the system. From the code book the user was to choose contents for yiewing^with a single tap of the key,\" as mentioned earlier. In the current system it is possible lor the user to call something to the screen by picking the name from a screen menu or relational diagram with the light pen. Fie may do this not just with whole units, but also with subparts and different ver- v sions—separate copies—of documents being tentatively edited.",{"_37":385,"_39":386},[],{"_41":42,"_43":387,"_45":46,"_47":388,"_49":389,"_51":390,"_53":54},"lmCgmnpX",{},[],"The memex user looked at several documents simultaneously through several screens or panels of the same screen (107, col. 1, para, 6). This simultaneous viewing will be possible for several documents on the Parallel Textface; indeed, explicit linkages between associated texts may be viewed on request. This is the notion of \"parallel text,\" useful for commentaries, translations, intercomparisons of documents and much else. These facilities correspond rather well, I think, to Bush's \"marginal notes and comments\" between the \"several projection posi¬ tions.\"",{"_37":392,"_39":393},[],{"_41":42,"_43":394,"_45":46,"_47":395,"_49":396,"_51":397,"_53":54},"twmc1uQQ",{},[],"The memex user created annotations by hand, or links between the things that were being viewed simultaneously. This is possible on the current system, which allows the user to create links between text sections regardless of whether or not they are parts of the same unit or otherwise related. These may be between parallel texts, or among free- floating paragraphs (discrete or \"free\" hypertexts), or in virtually any other useful arrangement.",{"_37":399,"_39":400},[],{"_41":42,"_43":401,"_45":46,"_47":402,"_49":403,"_51":404,"_53":54},"PC4fPpfg",{},[],"For any system of this kind, design problems arise in the richer operations, such as creating and modifying connective structures. It is taken for granted that the console must be easy to use. That is no design problem for a small set of operations, such as text editing. But the design of the overall file handling elements and actions is more complicated. There are two problems. The first is how to achieve the desired perfor¬ mance values on available equipment and accepted software setting. This becomes a tradeoff. The grander problem, though, is conceptual unification for the system's filing structure and conventions.",{"_37":406,"_39":407},[],{"_41":42,"_43":408,"_45":46,"_47":409,"_49":410,"_51":411,"_53":54},"_pEfIwrZ",{},[],"In the current system there is presently only one type of connector. This restriction nevertheless permits a system sufficient to support real hypertext experimentation. Complex or annotated couplings are pres¬ ently not defined. However, simple links are adequate for various possible forms of discrete-jump hypertexts, including Bush trails, and may in principle be extended to computer responsibility for link behav¬ iors and complex coupling maintenance.",{"_41":58,"_43":413,"_45":46,"_47":414,"_49":415,"_51":416,"_53":54},"LXMJugTL",{"_176":177},[],"The Console",{"_37":418,"_39":559},[419,426,440,454,468,482,489,496,503,510,517,524,531,538,545,552],{"_37":420,"_39":421},[],{"_41":42,"_43":422,"_45":46,"_47":423,"_49":424,"_51":425,"_53":54},"0WEyivCC",{},[],"While Bush's term, \"trail,\" represents a very useful concept, we must generalize it. Bush's interest in microfilm led to his idea of the trail having a sequence.",{"_37":427,"_39":435},[428],{"_37":429,"_39":430},[],{"_41":42,"_43":431,"_45":46,"_47":432,"_49":433,"_51":434,"_53":54},"qf_cC4Y7",{},[],"For [the user] runs through an encyclopedia, finds an interesting but sketchy article, leaves it projected. Next, in a history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the two together. Thus he goes, building a trail of many items. (107, col. 2, para. 4)",{"_41":42,"_43":436,"_45":46,"_47":437,"_49":438,"_51":439,"_53":54},"10j2-4ds",{"_176":177},[],"By \"trail,\" Bush appears to have meant a sequence of document*^ document excerpts, and comment! upon them.",{"_37":441,"_39":449},[442],{"_37":443,"_39":444},[],{"_41":42,"_43":445,"_45":46,"_47":446,"_49":447,"_51":448,"_53":54},"5sDzzO17",{},[],"When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined projected onto adjacent viewing positions.... The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined. (107, col. 2, para. 2)",{"_41":42,"_43":450,"_45":46,"_47":451,"_49":452,"_51":453,"_53":54},"9C9AlJI6",{"_176":177},[],"This sequence would be established by making paired couplings.",{"_37":455,"_39":463},[456],{"_37":457,"_39":458},[],{"_41":42,"_43":459,"_45":46,"_47":460,"_49":461,"_51":462,"_53":54},"dV1QbUyB",{},[],"Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either linking it into the main trail or joining it by a side trail to a particular item.",{"_41":42,"_43":464,"_45":46,"_47":465,"_49":466,"_51":467,"_53":54},"soA09eVb",{"_176":177},[],"Bush mentions two other types of trail. One is the \"side trail,\" branching out from a main trail sequence.",{"_37":469,"_39":477},[470],{"_37":471,"_39":472},[],{"_41":42,"_43":473,"_45":46,"_47":474,"_49":475,"_51":476,"_53":54},"eOeFvpiI",{},[],"The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only on the salient items, and can follow at any time contemporary trails which lead him all over civilization at a particular epoch. (108, col. 1, para. 1)",{"_41":42,"_43":478,"_45":46,"_47":479,"_49":480,"_51":481,"_53":54},"T_Dc-elN",{"_176":177},[],"The other type of trail is the \"skip trail,\" a subset of a main trail sequence that contains the highlights.",{"_37":483,"_39":484},[],{"_41":42,"_43":485,"_45":46,"_47":486,"_49":487,"_51":488,"_53":54},"YHIk647s",{},[],"In Bush's trails, the user had no choices to make as he moved through the sequence of items, except at an intersection of trails. With computer storage, however, no sequence need be imposed on the material; and, instead of simply storing materials in their order of arrival or of being noticed, it will be possible to create overall structures of greater useful? complexity. These may have, for instance, patterns of branches in various directions. Such non-sequential or complex text structures we may call \"hypertexts.\" (7)",{"_37":490,"_39":491},[],{"_41":42,"_43":492,"_45":46,"_47":493,"_49":494,"_51":495,"_53":54},"UfB8V-Sg",{},[],"\"Hypertext\" is the generic term; there are reasons, for which there Is no room here, to rule out such other candidate terms as \"branching text,\" \"graph-structured text,\" \"complex text\" and \"tree text.\"",{"_37":497,"_39":498},[],{"_41":42,"_43":499,"_45":46,"_47":500,"_49":501,"_51":502,"_53":54},"QOoVSIEq",{},[],"The best current definition of hypertext, over quite a broad range of types, is \"text Structure that cannot be conveniently printed.\" This is not very specific profound, but it fits best.",{"_37":504,"_39":505},[],{"_41":42,"_43":506,"_45":46,"_47":507,"_49":508,"_51":509,"_53":54},"-AGQ1NP9",{},[],"As Bush pointed out in his own terms, we think in hypertext (106, col. 2). We have been speaking hypertext all our lives and never known it. It is usually only in writing that we must pick thoughts up and irrelevantly put them down in the sequence demanded by the printed word. Writing is a process of making the tree of thought into a picket fence.",{"_37":511,"_39":512},[],{"_41":42,"_43":513,"_45":46,"_47":514,"_49":515,"_51":516,"_53":54},"hP34F12B",{},[],"Hypertext structures are varied. For instance, they may be free- branching with only one type of link and backing up; they may have modal links with different meanings in a free structure; or have modal links and repetitive structure.",{"_37":518,"_39":519},[],{"_41":42,"_43":520,"_45":46,"_47":521,"_49":522,"_51":523,"_53":54},"hhxI_GYs",{},[],"Discrete-jump hypertexts are not the only kinds. There is, for example. Stretchtext™. This is continuously variable text which never leaves the screen, but changes by small increments on user demand, growing longer and more detailed by a few words at a time, as required. Other continuous types are possible.",{"_37":525,"_39":526},[],{"_41":42,"_43":527,"_45":46,"_47":528,"_49":529,"_51":530,"_53":54},"3nvTs9mC",{},[],"Just as items may be coupled, whole hypertexts may be coupled into books, or one another. An example of the first would be a hypertext with annotations coupling into the Bible. Such multi-couplings involve bundles of pointers between the texts, possibly with type codes or annotations. (In the current system the non-annotated multicoupler is the canonical case between files.) They may also involve alternative versions, which there is no room to discuss here. The structuring of these coupler types is a continuing design task for hypertext systems.",{"_37":532,"_39":533},[],{"_41":42,"_43":534,"_45":46,"_47":535,"_49":536,"_51":537,"_53":54},"uLC2cmbX",{},[],"The creator of hypertexts may allow the user various options of jumping or branching. These options can lead the user to further reading in any pattern the author wants to make available to him. The only constraints on the author are usefulness, clarity, and artfulness.",{"_37":539,"_39":540},[],{"_41":42,"_43":541,"_45":46,"_47":542,"_49":543,"_51":544,"_53":54},"VZneRGrL",{},[],"There must, of course, be ways the reader may see, and choose among, possible branches from an item in the text. This problem was | implicit in Bush's treatment. Since \"any item can be joined into numer¬ ous trails\" (107, col. 2, para. 3) there would have had to be some way of j showing the user these options and their meaning. This is the case in] general, and a standing aspect of hypertext system design.",{"_37":546,"_39":547},[],{"_41":42,"_43":548,"_45":46,"_47":549,"_49":550,"_51":551,"_53":54},"iYPj_x-O",{},[],"Hypertexts may be casual rough notes, as described in Bush'l extended example of the Turkish bow and arrow; or they may at th@| other extreme be finished units, editorially completed and organized* Such finished units would have many of the same properties as binary writing: intentional assembly, attempted clarity and expository structure of enumerable \"points,\" and an overall comprehensible pat¬ tern whose interrelated parts may be in some way remembered or visualized. Finally, the concept of authorship applies to hypertexts as much as it does to an ordinary book or article.",{"_37":553,"_39":554},[],{"_41":42,"_43":555,"_45":46,"_47":556,"_49":557,"_51":558,"_53":54},"MXn38uto",{},[],"As with ordinary texts, too, the editorial properties and \"feel\" of hypertexts may be quite distinct and varied. For hypertexts these are of course largely unexplored. It is also very hard to anticipate their possible administrative and social settings, and this will greatly affect their character and the modes of their use.",{"_41":58,"_43":560,"_45":46,"_47":561,"_49":562,"_51":563,"_53":54},"EsLzTZeo",{"_176":177},[],"Hypertexts",{"_37":565,"_39":587},[566,580],{"_37":567,"_39":575},[568],{"_37":569,"_39":570},[],{"_41":42,"_43":571,"_45":46,"_47":572,"_49":573,"_51":574,"_53":54},"4MeAzRck",{},[],"The network will consist of several computers or computer-like objects. In the user's own unit is digital logic, and possibly (as in our Xanadu) a small computer; if not, this unit is serviced or managed by a computer which stores the user's files and communicates with the library network. The user's requests for documents that are not avail¬ able locally go out to a library network. These requests are sorted out to the appropriate repository machine; the repository machine returns the document and a bill or fee schedule.",{"_41":42,"_43":576,"_45":46,"_47":577,"_49":578,"_51":579,"_53":54},"2q33hgDx",{"_176":177},[],"A general transmission network will carry requested documents from libraries to users, new documents from users to libraries, and commu¬ nications and documents between users.",{"_37":581,"_39":582},[],{"_41":42,"_43":583,"_45":46,"_47":584,"_49":585,"_51":586,"_53":54},"RzHgKXEU",{},[],"Various fees are logged up to the user. These will include various basic costs, such as membership in the system, rental of the terminal and hookup. Additional fees may include logged-in time, per-usage costs of s ' various facilities (such as average memory area occupied and quanti¬ ties of text moved), storage charges for materials kept locally, and royalties to copyright holders. It should be noted that various grades of service may also exist, in which the user gets faster service by claiming larger buffers and higher priorities, and pays for the privilege.",{"_41":58,"_43":588,"_45":46,"_47":589,"_49":590,"_51":591,"_53":54},"2uctG9Ee",{"_176":177},[],"The Transmission Network",{"_37":593,"_39":594},[],{"_41":42,"_43":595,"_45":46,"_47":596,"_49":597,"_51":598,"_53":54},"Z34QbOfh",{},[],"A1 though this may sound like a formidable prospect, in general and with polishing there is reason to hope that the real costs of such a system will compete favorably with the real costs of the forms of publication and libraries we now employ. (Of course, in such \"real cost\" we must include the library services supplied \"free\" by various levels of govern¬ ment, including municipal libraries, grants to universities and the indirect subsidy of publishers by low postal rates. It is not unthinkable that similar encouragement will come about for this form of publishing and libraryship.)",{"_37":600,"_39":601},[],{"_41":42,"_43":602,"_45":46,"_47":603,"_49":604,"_51":605,"_53":54},"goBmMxuA",{},[],"Various technical design issues exist. These involve the feeder computers and their forms of memory. These hierarchies of memory are fairly clear. They will generally include disk (for working areas and directories), magnetic card or data cell (for the corpus), and magnetic tape (for rarely-needed materials and safety copies). Immense solid- state memories will never take over completely unless they are cheaper.",{"_37":607,"_39":608},[],{"_41":42,"_43":609,"_45":46,"_47":610,"_49":611,"_51":612,"_53":54},"GsGw4htV",{},[],"A more difficult question is, what should the feeder computers be? Their job in this system is the lookup and shovelling of text, plus book¬ keeping. One school of thought holds that a true general-purpose time¬ sharing system is necessary; another, that the correct machine is a dedicated computer with rich interrupts and comparatively little arith¬ metic capacity. The third school would point out the special character of the work and lean toward special designs and special tradeoffs, which could be anything from associative memory to the use of delay¬ line machines.",{"_37":614,"_39":615},[],{"_41":42,"_43":616,"_45":46,"_47":617,"_49":618,"_51":619,"_53":54},"zbAVqPyW",{},[],"Similar issues exist for memory software and directory systems. There are complex technical problems of index and search techniques, and methods of their cross-tabulation. But they can be handled in some way or other.",{"_37":621,"_39":622},[],{"_41":42,"_43":623,"_45":46,"_47":624,"_49":625,"_51":626,"_53":54},"krHVUmbv",{},[],"A warning is necessary here, however. This area of console support is the area where things are not yet ready. The prediction of economic feasibility in five years, an eon in the computer world, is not the same as feasibility now. By devoting a whole computer, disk and tape to each user, the problem of console support can now be solved, in a manner of speaking; but the general problem of interleaved I/O and file manage¬ ment, with the efficient sharing of facilities, is another problem entirely, and the one that must be solved to make this whole thing go.",{"_37":628,"_39":657},[629,636,643,650],{"_37":630,"_39":631},[],{"_41":42,"_43":632,"_45":46,"_47":633,"_49":634,"_51":635,"_53":54},"HvU5_0F7",{},[],"Bush regarded his new text structures as transmissible between indi¬ viduals, and publishable. The same is true of hypertext units, the generalized form of trails. I think it likely that once such systems are available, the creation of branching and complex text will become recognized as far more natural than the structures in which we now must write.",{"_37":637,"_39":638},[],{"_41":42,"_43":639,"_45":46,"_47":640,"_49":641,"_51":642,"_53":54},"NpJlNMMo",{},[],"This will all follow naturally from the existence of consoles which permit multiple couplings between texts. Having created for personal use a hyper-document on one's console, it will seem only reasonable to press a button passing this on to a colleague in its hyper-form, without chopping and aligning it into conventional writing.",{"_37":644,"_39":645},[],{"_41":42,"_43":646,"_45":46,"_47":647,"_49":648,"_51":649,"_53":54},"GqUvfyXk",{},[],"Various interesting possibilities follow. Private \"journals\" in a field may be started among co-workers merely by the pooling of their hyper¬ documents. The rental of memory space on magnetic cards is inconse¬ quential next to what have been the costs of printing and mailing.",{"_37":651,"_39":652},[],{"_41":42,"_43":653,"_45":46,"_47":654,"_49":655,"_51":656,"_53":54},"Xfwi21W4",{},[],"When professional and technical societies become interested in sponsoring hyper-publication, one of the most straightforward ways to begin would be with the creation of society-sponsored review articles. These could be like the ordinary review articles sponsored by such societies, save that the review article would open directly into the various materials it was reviewing, and footnotes could be more extensive and slanted to different categories of reader. (Eigure 1.)",{"_41":58,"_43":658,"_45":46,"_47":659,"_49":660,"_51":661,"_53":54},"6C-tIuHJ",{"_176":177},[],"Publication: Redesign of the Technical Literature",{"_37":663,"_39":664},[],{"_41":665,"_43":666,"_45":46,"_47":667,"_49":668,"_51":54,"_53":669},"Image","AHdU7Sic",{"_176":177},[],"ipfs://bafkreih45rwplfyhtcvhvhoartio23fr3nw6m6j376tdi4zwetqeytmcde",{"_37":671,"_39":672},[],{"_41":42,"_43":673,"_45":46,"_47":674,"_49":675,"_51":676,"_53":54},"4N2-B8DE",{},[],"The next step is, of course, the creation of hyper-magazines or journals under the sponsorship and supervision of professional societ¬ ies. Here the problem of organization would seem to become thorny. But this collection could be much like the journals of today, except for the direct availability of previous literature, working papers and vari¬ ous odds and ends. It should be observed that any of the \"documents\" noted in the illustration can themselves be hypertexts. (Figure 2.)",{"_37":678,"_39":679},[],{"_41":665,"_43":680,"_45":46,"_47":681,"_49":682,"_51":54,"_53":683},"xZqgbKwl",{"_176":177},[],"ipfs://bafkreidg4wc4cvzvp7m3e4gvxyultgcikkm5staxbf6ziywff5s6mxmuzm",{"_37":685,"_39":686},[],{"_41":42,"_43":687,"_45":46,"_47":688,"_49":689,"_51":690,"_53":54},"RCYxK8Fa",{},[],"In this magazine, an arbitrary conjecture, all material of the past year is considered \"recent\" and embraced in a common lookup struc¬ ture. New material enters the collection surreptitiously, at whatever time of day or night the editors release it; material one year old is formally expelled to a different file on the first of each month. (It may be just as accessible, but its nominal status changes, rather like that of a book taken off the \"recent acquisitions\" list of a library.) This maga¬ zine would hold most of what people were talking about in a field, and it would all be right there.",{"_37":692,"_39":693},[],{"_41":42,"_43":694,"_45":46,"_47":695,"_49":696,"_51":697,"_53":54},"PTfKOL8e",{},[],"There are numerous technical complications to hypertext publish¬ ing. There is no room here to discuss the more esoteric technical ones, such as facilities, billing and copyright conventions, or possible techniques of encryption and validation to prevent pirating of works and to authenticate expeditionary versions.",{"_37":699,"_39":749},[700,707,714,721,728,735,742],{"_37":701,"_39":702},[],{"_41":42,"_43":703,"_45":46,"_47":704,"_49":705,"_51":706,"_53":54},"JTmcgPSS",{},[],"How shall it begin?",{"_37":708,"_39":709},[],{"_41":42,"_43":710,"_45":46,"_47":711,"_49":712,"_51":713,"_53":54},"AeoACfTd",{},[],"Those contemplating massive retrieval systems commonly pre¬ sume that they must begin with some massive corpus all accessible. The Library of Congress is often mentioned. Even Bush supposes regret¬ fully (in the revised article, p. 100) that the personal system waits on large public establishments being automated first.",{"_37":715,"_39":716},[],{"_41":42,"_43":717,"_45":46,"_47":718,"_49":719,"_51":720,"_53":54},"odGms8KE",{},[],"I do not believe this is so. It will be practicable and of considerable interest to begin on a small scale, having no grand corpus available. The grand corpus will come soon enough, as requests emerge. (We have a precedent: the prowess of University Microfilms, Inc. in rendering texts available to scholars in microfilm.)",{"_37":722,"_39":723},[],{"_41":42,"_43":724,"_45":46,"_47":725,"_49":726,"_51":727,"_53":54},"EDQvrf0V",{},[],"The way to begin is to furnish supported consoles to small commu¬ nities of users: key members of a \"small\" discipline, or specialists among whose work there is close connection. Suitable groups might be \"early Egyptologists,\" or just plain \"everybody at Woods Hole.\"",{"_37":729,"_39":730},[],{"_41":42,"_43":731,"_45":46,"_47":732,"_49":733,"_51":734,"_53":54},"2ov65eVP",{},[],"Such communicants, having been assured as well as possible of privacy and fail-safe design, will be encouraged to use the consoles fully. From the outset they may keep all their notes, manuscripts, articles, and copies of outgoing correspondence, on the system.",{"_37":736,"_39":737},[],{"_41":42,"_43":738,"_45":46,"_47":739,"_49":740,"_51":741,"_53":54},"gJRQI_G-",{},[],"The rest will follow. I am fairly sure of the predictions so far, at least in broad outline, but I am just as sure that the first generation of hypertext users will invent twice as much as has been descried and described so far.",{"_37":743,"_39":744},[],{"_41":42,"_43":745,"_45":46,"_47":746,"_49":747,"_51":748,"_53":54},"JGwiEpx3",{},[],"Who will support these beginnings? We have a choice, at the outset, of universities, publishing companies, computer companies (including service bureaux), research organizations or the government. Any of these might take such an initiative. Though such an initiative would seem severally unthinkable, it somehow seems collectively plausible and, of course, historically inevitable. If you believe in manifest destiny.",{"_41":58,"_43":750,"_45":46,"_47":751,"_49":752,"_51":753,"_53":54},"NmPbmZbl",{"_176":177},[],"How to Begin",{"_37":755,"_39":756},[],{"_41":42,"_43":757,"_45":46,"_47":758,"_49":759,"_51":760,"_53":54},"FqdZj537",{},[],"Theodor H. Nelson",{"_37":762,"_39":812},[763,770,777,784,791,798,805],{"_37":764,"_39":765},[],{"_41":42,"_43":766,"_45":46,"_47":767,"_49":768,"_51":769,"_53":54},"q7BCIKoH",{},[],"Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think.\" The Atlantic Monthly 176:1 (July, 1945), 101-108. References to \"Bush\" cite this article unless further specified, and all unexplained numbers and paginations in the text refer to it. Because the article is so tightly written and our interest in it so close, paginations are given to the column and paragraph.",{"_37":771,"_39":772},[],{"_41":42,"_43":773,"_45":46,"_47":774,"_49":775,"_51":776,"_53":54},"BAYej_AG",{},[],"Allen Kent, Textbook on Mechanized Information Retrieval , second edition. Wiley, 1966; pp. 7-9.",{"_37":778,"_39":779},[],{"_41":42,"_43":780,"_45":46,"_47":781,"_49":782,"_51":783,"_53":54},"Knny6v2L",{},[],"Joseph Becker and Robert M. Hayes, Information Storage and Retrieval: Tools, Elements, Theories. Wiley, 1963; p. 40.",{"_37":785,"_39":786},[],{"_41":42,"_43":787,"_45":46,"_47":788,"_49":789,"_51":790,"_53":54},"FCyi95T7",{},[],"John H. Wilson, \"As We May Have Thought.\" In Progress in Information Science and Technology: Proceedings of the American Documentation Institute 1966 Annual Meeting. Adrianne Press, 1966, pp. 117-122.",{"_37":792,"_39":793},[],{"_41":42,"_43":794,"_45":46,"_47":795,"_49":796,"_51":797,"_53":54},"OiWtgN5T",{},[],"Vannevar Bush, \"Memex Revisited.\" In Vannevar Bush, Science Is Not Enough. William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1967, 75-101.",{"_37":799,"_39":800},[],{"_41":42,"_43":801,"_45":46,"_47":802,"_49":803,"_51":804,"_53":54},"-cs1mRKO",{},[],"Douglas C. Engelbart, \"Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework.\" AFOSR-3223 Summary Report, Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park, California, October 1962. This expresses the philosophy, rather than the results, of the continuing project.",{"_37":806,"_39":807},[],{"_41":42,"_43":808,"_45":46,"_47":809,"_49":810,"_51":811,"_53":54},"mzUjEM1v",{},[],"Theodor H. Nelson, \"Getting It Out of Our System.\" In George Schechter (ed.). Information Retrieval: A Critical View. 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a future 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. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.”",{"_37":1815,"_39":1816},[],{"_41":42,"_43":1817,"_45":1804,"_47":1818,"_49":1819,"_51":1826,"_53":54},"PUjhoPGO",{},[1820],{"_41":1492,"_1455":1821,"_1457":1822,"_47":1824,"_53":1825},[1766],[1823],16,{},"undefined","By Vannevar Bush",{"_37":1828,"_39":1829},[],{"_41":42,"_43":1830,"_45":1804,"_47":1831,"_49":1832,"_51":1840,"_53":54},"jHU9XtzX",{},[1833],{"_41":1492,"_1455":1834,"_1457":1836,"_47":1838,"_53":1839},[1835],10,[1837],18,{},"hm://z6MkrbYsRzKb1VABdvhsDSAk6JK8fAszKsyHhcaZigYeWCou/keywords?v=bafy2bzacebmjuozpxuj7gz5xopm7bcqql3wrsuvtxwex3myzvynb4vrsa7r3q#hEOcMm4d","Keywords: Keywords",{"_37":1842,"_39":1843},[],{"_41":665,"_43":1844,"_45":1845,"_47":1846,"_49":1847,"_51":54,"_53":1848},"_moUTRZu","bafy2bzacebyntfji7b2sxuoksf34hmbgrngkdzymwxl5d2egorjnpa5ipufny",{"_176":177},[],"ipfs://bafybeifbrtystxmyorvcqtndxmtwlj5oozrq7ytjz3g2c3jw4mu4trv4nq",{"_37":1850,"_39":1851},[],{"_41":42,"_43":1852,"_45":1804,"_47":1853,"_49":1854,"_51":1855,"_53":54},"h5EzPleN",{},[],"This has not been a scientist's war; it has been a war in which all have had a part. The scientists, burying their old professional competition in the demand of a common cause, have shared greatly and learned much. It has been exhilarating to work in effective partnership. Now, for many, this appears to be approaching an end. What are the scientists to do next?",{"_37":1857,"_39":1858},[],{"_41":42,"_43":1859,"_45":1804,"_47":1860,"_49":1861,"_51":1862,"_53":54},"7bq1agtk",{},[],"For the biologists, and particularly for the medical scientists, there can be little indecision, for their war has hardly required them to leave the old paths. Many indeed have been able to carry on their war research in their familiar peacetime laboratories. Their objectives remain much the same. WOW",{"_37":1864,"_39":1865},[],{"_41":42,"_43":1866,"_45":1804,"_47":1867,"_49":1868,"_51":1869,"_53":54},"vaq59NuB",{},[],"It is the physicists who have been thrown most violently off stride, who have left academic pursuits for the making of strange destructive gadgets, who have had to devise new methods for their unanticipated assignments. They have done their part on the devices that made it possible to turn back the enemy, have worked in combined effort with the physicists of our allies. They have felt within themselves the stir of achievement. They have been part of a great team. Now, as peace approaches, one asks where they will find objectives worthy of their best.",{"_37":1871,"_39":1959},[1872,1880,1887,1894,1913,1920,1927,1934,1941],{"_37":1873,"_39":1874},[],{"_41":42,"_43":1875,"_45":1876,"_47":1877,"_49":1878,"_51":1879,"_53":54},"fsvLRbpM","bafy2bzaceb7xb4ixpk4kzd73mql3ogwmak26fcc3plf35sbrxmr7lzh3drfyw",{},[],"Of what lasting benefit has been man’s use of science and of the new instruments which his research brought into existence? First, they have increased his control of his material environment. They have improved his food, his clothing, his shelter; they have increased his security and released him partly from the bondage of bare existence. They have given him increased knowledge of his own biological processes so that he has had a progressive freedom from disease and an increased span of life. They are illuminating the interactions of his physiological and psychological functions, giving the promise of an improved mental health.",{"_37":1881,"_39":1882},[],{"_41":42,"_43":1883,"_45":1876,"_47":1884,"_49":1885,"_51":1886,"_53":54},"FtyqstGP",{},[],"Science has provided the swiftest communication between individuals; it has provided a record of ideas and has enabled man to manipulate and to make extracts from that record so that knowledge evolves and endures throughout the life of a race rather than that of an individual.",{"_37":1888,"_39":1889},[],{"_41":42,"_43":1890,"_45":1876,"_47":1891,"_49":1892,"_51":1893,"_53":54},"EtPB8OOn",{},[],"There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers—conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, as they appear. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial.",{"_37":1895,"_39":1896},[],{"_41":42,"_43":1897,"_45":1876,"_47":1898,"_49":1899,"_51":1912,"_53":54},"ElkdsWEh",{},[1900,1907],{"_41":1492,"_1455":1901,"_1457":1903,"_47":1905,"_53":1906},[1902],594,[1904],610,{},"https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/genes-are-overrated/480729/",{"_41":1908,"_1455":1909,"_1457":1910,"_47":1911,"_53":54},"Underline",[1902],[1904],{},"Professionally our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purpose. If the aggregate time spent in writing scholarly works and in reading them could be evaluated, the ratio between these amounts of time might well be startling. Those who conscientiously attempt to keep abreast of current thought, even in restricted fields, by close and continuous reading might well shy away from an examination calculated to show how much of the previous month’s efforts could be produced on call. 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.",{"_37":1914,"_39":1915},[],{"_41":42,"_43":1916,"_45":1876,"_47":1917,"_49":1918,"_51":1919,"_53":54},"_X828seC",{},[],"The difficulty seems to be, not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present day interests, but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record. The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships.",{"_37":1921,"_39":1922},[],{"_41":42,"_43":1923,"_45":1876,"_47":1924,"_49":1925,"_51":1926,"_53":54},"UulAaPMh",{},[],"But there are signs of a change as new and powerful instrumentalities come into use. Photocells capable of seeing things in a physical sense, advanced photography which can record what is seen or even what is not, thermionic tubes capable of controlling potent forces under the guidance of less power than a mosquito uses to vibrate his wings, cathode ray tubes rendering visible an occurrence so brief that by comparison a microsecond is a long time, relay combinations which will carry out involved sequences of movements more reliably than any human operator and thousands of times as fast—there are plenty of mechanical aids with which to effect a transformation in scientific records.",{"_37":1928,"_39":1929},[],{"_41":42,"_43":1930,"_45":1876,"_47":1931,"_49":1932,"_51":1933,"_53":54},"CQCC_MuI",{},[],"Two centuries ago Leibnitz invented a calculating machine which embodied most of the essential features of recent keyboard devices, but it could not then come into use. The economics of the situation were against it: the labor involved in constructing it, before the days of mass production, exceeded the labor to be saved by its use, since all it could accomplish could be duplicated by sufficient use of pencil and paper. Moreover, it would have been subject to frequent breakdown, so that it could not have been depended upon; for at that time and long after, complexity and unreliability were synonymous.",{"_37":1935,"_39":1936},[],{"_41":42,"_43":1937,"_45":1876,"_47":1938,"_49":1939,"_51":1940,"_53":54},"kvppvgUU",{},[],"Babbage, even with remarkably generous support for his time, could not produce his great arithmetical machine. His idea was sound enough, but construction and maintenance costs were then too heavy. Had a Pharaoh been given detailed and explicit designs of an automobile, and had he understood them completely, it would have taxed the resources of his kingdom to have fashioned the thousands of parts for a single car, and that car would have broken down on the first trip to Giza.",{"_37":1942,"_39":1943},[],{"_41":42,"_43":1944,"_45":1876,"_47":1945,"_49":1946,"_51":1958,"_53":54},"rW1JcTwl",{},[1947,1954],{"_41":1492,"_1455":1948,"_1457":1950,"_47":1952,"_53":1953},[1949],153,[1951],170,{},"https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/09/the-hidden-world-of-the-typewriter/279523/",{"_41":1908,"_1455":1955,"_1457":1956,"_47":1957,"_53":54},[1949],[1951],{},"Machines with interchangeable parts can now be constructed with great economy of effort. In spite of much complexity, they perform reliably. Witness the humble typewriter, or the movie camera, or the automobile. Electrical contacts have ceased to stick when thoroughly understood. Note the automatic telephone exchange, which has hundreds of thousands of such contacts, and yet is reliable. A spider web of metal, sealed in a thin glass container, a wire heated to brilliant glow, in short, the thermionic tube of radio sets, is made by the hundred million, tossed about in packages, plugged into sockets—and it works! Its gossamer parts, the precise location and alignment involved in its construction, would have occupied a master craftsman of the guild for months; now it is built for thirty cents. The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.",{"_41":58,"_43":1960,"_45":1876,"_47":1961,"_49":1962,"_51":1963,"_53":54},"-6w4sC-U",{"_176":177},[],"1",{"_37":1965,"_39":2065},[1966,1973,1980,1987,1994,2001,2008,2015,2022,2029,2036,2050],{"_37":1967,"_39":1968},[],{"_41":42,"_43":1969,"_45":1876,"_47":1970,"_49":1971,"_51":1972,"_53":54},"SRZ0vATy",{},[],"A record if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted. Today we make the record conventionally by writing and photography, followed by printing; but we also record on film, on wax disks, and on magnetic wires. Even if utterly new recording procedures do not appear, these present ones are certainly in the process of modification and extension.",{"_37":1974,"_39":1975},[],{"_41":42,"_43":1976,"_45":1876,"_47":1977,"_49":1978,"_51":1979,"_53":54},"2c3C7fi7",{},[],"Certainly progress in photography is not going to stop. Faster material and lenses, more automatic cameras, finer-grained sensitive compounds to allow an extension of the minicamera idea, are all imminent. Let us project this trend ahead to a logical, if not inevitable, outcome. 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. The lens is of universal focus, down to any distance accommodated by the unaided eye, simply because it is of short focal length. There is a built-in photocell on the walnut such as we now have on at least one camera, which automatically adjusts exposure for a wide range of illumination. There is film in the walnut for a hundred exposures, and the spring for operating its shutter and shifting its film is wound once for all when the film clip is inserted. It produces its result in full color. It may well be stereoscopic, and record with two spaced glass eyes, for striking improvements in stereoscopic technique are just around the corner.",{"_37":1981,"_39":1982},[],{"_41":42,"_43":1983,"_45":1876,"_47":1984,"_49":1985,"_51":1986,"_53":54},"pdVl6vYY",{},[],"The cord which trips its shutter may reach down a man’s sleeve within easy reach of his fingers. A quick squeeze, and the picture is taken. On a pair of ordinary glasses is a square of fine lines near the top of one lens, where it is out of the way of ordinary vision. When an object appears in that square, it is lined up for its picture. As the scientist of the future moves about the laboratory or the field, every time he looks at something worthy of the record, he trips the shutter and in it goes, without even an audible click. Is this all fantastic? The only fantastic thing about it is the idea of making as many pictures as would result from its use.",{"_37":1988,"_39":1989},[],{"_41":42,"_43":1990,"_45":1876,"_47":1991,"_49":1992,"_51":1993,"_53":54},"Om8w7cZv",{},[],"Will there be dry photography? It is already here in two forms. When Brady made his Civil War pictures, the plate had to be wet at the time of exposure. Now it has to be wet during development instead. In the future perhaps it need not be wetted at all. There have long been films impregnated with diazo dyes which form a picture without development, so that it is already there as soon as the camera has been operated. An exposure to ammonia gas destroys the unexposed dye, and the picture can then be taken out into the light and examined. The process is now slow, but someone may speed it up, and it has no grain difficulties such as now keep photographic researchers busy. Often it would be advantageous to be able to snap the camera and to look at the picture immediately.",{"_37":1995,"_39":1996},[],{"_41":42,"_43":1997,"_45":1876,"_47":1998,"_49":1999,"_51":2000,"_53":54},"GYpDNHoP",{},[],"Another process now in use is also slow, and more or less clumsy. For fifty years impregnated papers have been used which turn dark at every point where an electrical contact touches them, by reason of the chemical change thus produced in an iodine compound included in the paper. They have been used to make records, for a pointer moving across them can leave a trail behind. If the electrical potential on the pointer is varied as it moves, the line becomes light or dark in accordance with the potential.",{"_37":2002,"_39":2003},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2004,"_45":1876,"_47":2005,"_49":2006,"_51":2007,"_53":54},"uhEJCqrR",{},[],"This scheme is now used in facsimile transmission. The pointer draws a set of closely spaced lines across the paper one after another. As it moves, its potential is varied in accordance with a varying current received over wires from a distant station, where these variations are produced by a photocell which is similarly scanning a picture. At every instant the darkness of the line being drawn is made equal to the darkness of the point on the picture being observed by the photocell. Thus, when the whole picture has been covered, a replica appears at the receiving end.",{"_37":2009,"_39":2010},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2011,"_45":1876,"_47":2012,"_49":2013,"_51":2014,"_53":54},"KtGcS1nr",{},[],"A scene itself can be just as well looked over line by line by the photocell in this way as can a photograph of the scene. This whole apparatus constitutes a camera, with the added feature, which can be dispensed with if desired, of making its picture at a distance. It is slow, and the picture is poor in detail. Still, it does give another process of dry photography, in which the picture is finished as soon as it is taken.",{"_37":2016,"_39":2017},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2018,"_45":1876,"_47":2019,"_49":2020,"_51":2021,"_53":54},"VomN4nAf",{},[],"It would be a brave man who would predict that such a process will always remain clumsy, slow, and faulty in detail. Television equipment today transmits sixteen reasonably good pictures a second, and it involves only two essential differences from the process described above. For one, the record is made by a moving beam of electrons rather than a moving pointer, for the reason that an electron beam can sweep across the picture very rapidly indeed. The other difference involves merely the use of a screen which glows momentarily when the electrons hit, rather than a chemically treated paper or film which is permanently altered. This speed is necessary in television, for motion pictures rather than stills are the object.",{"_37":2023,"_39":2024},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2025,"_45":1876,"_47":2026,"_49":2027,"_51":2028,"_53":54},"t1EgGQs2",{},[],"Use chemically treated film in place of the glowing screen, allow the apparatus to transmit one picture only rather than a succession, and a rapid camera for dry photography results. The treated film needs to be far faster in action than present examples, but it probably could be. More serious is the objection that this scheme would involve putting the film inside a vacuum chamber, for electron beams behave normally only in such a rarefied environment. This difficulty could be avoided by allowing the electron beam to play on one side of a partition, and by pressing the film against the other side, if this partition were such as to allow the electrons to go through perpendicular to its surface, and to prevent them from spreading out sideways. Such partitions, in crude form, could certainly be constructed, and they will hardly hold up the general development.",{"_37":2030,"_39":2031},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2032,"_45":1876,"_47":2033,"_49":2034,"_51":2035,"_53":54},"K1L6Vnfe",{},[],"Like dry photography, microphotography still has a long way to go. The basic scheme of reducing the size of the record, and examining it by projection rather than directly, has possibilities too great to be ignored. The combination of optical projection and photographic reduction is already producing some results in microfilm for scholarly purposes, and the potentialities are highly suggestive. Today, with microfilm, reductions by a linear factor of 20 can be employed and still produce full clarity when the material is re-enlarged for examination. The limits are set by the graininess of the film, the excellence of the optical system, and the efficiency of the light sources employed. All of these are rapidly improving.",{"_37":2037,"_39":2038},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2039,"_45":1876,"_47":2040,"_49":2041,"_51":2049,"_53":54},"tAiERhgM",{},[2042],{"_41":2043,"_1455":2044,"_1457":2046,"_47":2048,"_53":54},"Italic",[2045],288,[2047],311,{},"Assume a linear ratio of 100 for future use. Consider film of the same thickness as paper, although thinner film will certainly be usable. Even under these conditions there would be a total factor of 10,000 between the bulk of the ordinary record on books, and its microfilm replica. The Encyclopædia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk. If the human race has produced since the invention of movable type a total record, in the form of magazines, newspapers, books, tracts, advertising blurbs, correspondence, having a volume corresponding to a billion books, the whole affair, assembled and compressed, could be lugged off in a moving van. Mere compression, of course, is not enough; one needs not only to make and store a record but also be able to consult it, and this aspect of the matter comes later. Even the modern great library is not generally consulted; it is nibbled at by a few.",{"_37":2051,"_39":2052},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2053,"_45":1876,"_47":2054,"_49":2055,"_51":2064,"_53":54},"hhWzhvhy",{},[2056],{"_41":2043,"_1455":2057,"_1457":2060,"_47":2063,"_53":54},[2058,2059],90,324,[2061,2062],100,334,{},"Compression is important, however, when it comes to costs. The material for the microfilm Britannica would cost a nickel, and it could be mailed anywhere for a cent. What would it cost to print a million copies? To print a sheet of newspaper, in a large edition, costs a small fraction of a cent. The entire material of the Britannica in reduced microfilm form would go on a sheet eight and one-half by eleven inches. Once it is available, with the photographic reproduction methods of the future, duplicates in large quantities could probably be turned out for a cent apiece beyond the cost of materials. The preparation of the original copy? That introduces the next aspect of the subject.",{"_41":58,"_43":2066,"_45":1876,"_47":2067,"_49":2068,"_51":2069,"_53":54},"_TGEPVNw",{"_176":177},[],"2",{"_37":2071,"_39":2149},[2072,2079,2086,2093,2100,2107,2114,2121,2128,2135,2142],{"_37":2073,"_39":2074},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2075,"_45":1876,"_47":2076,"_49":2077,"_51":2078,"_53":54},"mcSU_1Z4",{},[],"To make the record, we now push a pencil or tap a typewriter. Then comes the process of digestion and correction, followed by an intricate process of typesetting, printing, and distribution. To consider the first stage of the procedure, will the author of the future cease writing by hand or typewriter and talk directly to the record? He does so indirectly, by talking to a stenographer or a wax cylinder; but the elements are all present if he wishes to have his talk directly produce a typed record. All he needs to do is to take advantage of existing mechanisms and to alter his language.",{"_37":2080,"_39":2081},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2082,"_45":1876,"_47":2083,"_49":2084,"_51":2085,"_53":54},"e1OnZ5ys",{},[],"At a recent World Fair a machine called a Voder was shown. A girl stroked its keys and it emitted recognizable speech. No human vocal chords entered into the procedure at any point; the keys simply combined some electrically produced vibrations and passed these on to a loud-speaker. In the Bell Laboratories there is the converse of this machine, called a Vocoder. The loudspeaker is replaced by a microphone, which picks up sound. Speak to it, and the corresponding keys move. This may be one element of the postulated system.",{"_37":2087,"_39":2088},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2089,"_45":1876,"_47":2090,"_49":2091,"_51":2092,"_53":54},"3_IW5nwv",{},[],"The other element is found in the stenotype, that somewhat disconcerting device encountered usually at public meetings. A girl strokes its keys languidly and looks about the room and sometimes at the speaker with a disquieting gaze. From it emerges a typed strip which records in a phonetically simplified language a record of what the speaker is supposed to have said. Later this strip is retyped into ordinary language, for in its nascent form it is intelligible only to the initiated. Combine these two elements, let the Vocoder run the stenotype, and the result is a machine which types when talked to.",{"_37":2094,"_39":2095},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2096,"_45":1876,"_47":2097,"_49":2098,"_51":2099,"_53":54},"3APnJbW5",{},[],"Our present languages are not especially adapted to this sort of mechanization, it is true. 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. Mechanization may yet force the issue, especially in the scientific field; whereupon scientific jargon would become still less intelligible to the layman.",{"_37":2101,"_39":2102},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2103,"_45":1876,"_47":2104,"_49":2105,"_51":2106,"_53":54},"vyT4Qh7J",{},[],"One can now picture a future investigator in his laboratory. His hands are free, and he is not anchored. As he moves about and observes, he photographs and comments. Time is automatically recorded to tie the two records together. If he goes into the field, he may be connected by radio to his recorder. As he ponders over his notes in the evening, he again talks his comments into the record. His typed record, as well as his photographs, may both be in miniature, so that he projects them for examination.",{"_37":2108,"_39":2109},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2110,"_45":1876,"_47":2111,"_49":2112,"_51":2113,"_53":54},"DjqvcW_2",{},[],"Much needs to occur, however, between the collection of data and observations, the extraction of parallel material from the existing record, and the final insertion of new material into the general body of the common record. For mature thought there is no mechanical substitute. But creative thought and essentially repetitive thought are very different things. For the latter there are, and may be, powerful mechanical aids.",{"_37":2115,"_39":2116},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2117,"_45":1876,"_47":2118,"_49":2119,"_51":2120,"_53":54},"BQYHdvom",{},[],"Adding a column of figures is a repetitive thought process, and it was long ago properly relegated to the machine. True, the machine is sometimes controlled by a keyboard, and thought of a sort enters in reading the figures and poking the corresponding keys, but even this is avoidable. Machines have been made which will read typed figures by photocells and then depress the corresponding keys; these are combinations of photocells for scanning the type, electric circuits for sorting the consequent variations, and relay circuits for interpreting the result into the action of solenoids to pull the keys down.",{"_37":2122,"_39":2123},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2124,"_45":1876,"_47":2125,"_49":2126,"_51":2127,"_53":54},"wfxQINaa",{},[],"All this complication is needed because of the clumsy way in which we have learned to write figures. If we recorded them positionally, simply by the configuration of a set of dots on a card, the automatic reading mechanism would become comparatively simple. In fact if the dots are holes, we have the punched-card machine long ago produced by Hollorith for the purposes of the census, and now used throughout business. Some types of complex businesses could hardly operate without these machines.",{"_37":2129,"_39":2130},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2131,"_45":1876,"_47":2132,"_49":2133,"_51":2134,"_53":54},"3rsmlV1G",{},[],"Adding is only one operation. To perform arithmetical computation involves also subtraction, multiplication, and division, and in addition some method for temporary storage of results, removal from storage for further manipulation, and recording of final results by printing. Machines for these purposes are now of two types: keyboard machines for accounting and the like, manually controlled for the insertion of data, and usually automatically controlled as far as the sequence of operations is concerned; and punched-card machines in which separate operations are usually delegated to a series of machines, and the cards then transferred bodily from one to another. Both forms are very useful; but as far as complex computations are concerned, both are still in embryo.",{"_37":2136,"_39":2137},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2138,"_45":1876,"_47":2139,"_49":2140,"_51":2141,"_53":54},"HAKoL0UH",{},[],"Rapid electrical counting appeared soon after the physicists found it desirable to count cosmic rays. For their own purposes the physicists promptly constructed thermionic-tube equipment capable of counting electrical impulses at the rate of 100,000 a second. The advanced arithmetical machines of the future will be electrical in nature, and they will perform at 100 times present speeds, or more.",{"_37":2143,"_39":2144},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2145,"_45":1876,"_47":2146,"_49":2147,"_51":2148,"_53":54},"UxBKYabq",{},[],"Moreover, they will be far more versatile than present commercial machines, so that they may readily be adapted for a wide variety of operations. They 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, they will perform complex arithmetical computations at exceedingly high speeds, and they will record results in such form as to be readily available for distribution or for later further manipulation. Such machines will have enormous appetites. 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. There will always be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things.",{"_41":58,"_43":2150,"_45":1876,"_47":2151,"_49":2152,"_51":2153,"_53":54},"Caz1YMi1",{"_176":177},[],"3",{"_37":2155,"_39":2191},[2156,2163,2170,2177,2184],{"_37":2157,"_39":2158},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2159,"_45":1876,"_47":2160,"_49":2161,"_51":2162,"_53":54},"X0LPMZba",{},[],"The repetitive processes of thought are not confined however, to matters of arithmetic and statistics. In fact, every time one combines and records facts in accordance with established logical processes, the creative aspect of thinking is concerned only with the selection of the data and the process to be employed and the manipulation thereafter is repetitive in nature and hence a fit matter to be relegated to the machine. Not so much has been done along these lines, beyond the bounds of arithmetic, as might be done, primarily because of the economics of the situation. The needs of business and the extensive market obviously waiting, assured the advent of mass-produced arithmetical machines just as soon as production methods were sufficiently advanced.",{"_37":2164,"_39":2165},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2166,"_45":1876,"_47":2167,"_49":2168,"_51":2169,"_53":54},"2eSzLikN",{},[],"With machines for advanced analysis no such situation existed; for there was and is no extensive market; the users of advanced methods of manipulating data are a very small part of the population. There are, however, machines for solving differential equations—and functional and integral equations, for that matter. There are many special machines, such as the harmonic synthesizer which predicts the tides. There will be many more, appearing certainly first in the hands of the scientist and in small numbers.",{"_37":2171,"_39":2172},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2173,"_45":1876,"_47":2174,"_49":2175,"_51":2176,"_53":54},"YpDlMGqW",{},[],"If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability. The abacus, with its beads strung on parallel wires, led the Arabs to positional numeration and the concept of zero many centuries before the rest of the world; and it was a useful tool—so useful that it still exists.",{"_37":2178,"_39":2179},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2180,"_45":1876,"_47":2181,"_49":2182,"_51":2183,"_53":54},"BmIiNLll",{},[],"It is a far cry from the abacus to the modern keyboard accounting machine. It will be an equal step to the arithmetical machine of the future. But even this new machine will not take the scientist where he needs to go. Relief must be secured from laborious detailed manipulation of higher mathematics as well, if the users of it are to free their brains for something more than repetitive detailed transformations in accordance with established rules. A mathematician is not a man who can readily manipulate figures; often he cannot. He is not even a man who can readily perform the transformations of equations by the use of calculus. He is primarily an individual who is skilled in the use of symbolic logic on a high plane, and especially he is a man of intuitive judgment in the choice of the manipulative processes he employs.",{"_37":2185,"_39":2186},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2187,"_45":1876,"_47":2188,"_49":2189,"_51":2190,"_53":54},"Fo67osVh",{},[],"All else he should be able to turn over to his mechanism, just as confidently as he turns over the propelling of his car to the intricate mechanism under the hood. Only then will mathematics be practically effective in bringing the growing knowledge of atomistics to the useful solution of the advanced problems of chemistry, metallurgy, and biology. For this reason there still come more machines to handle advanced mathematics for the scientist. Some of them will be sufficiently bizarre to suit the most fastidious connoisseur of the present artifacts of civilization.",{"_41":58,"_43":2192,"_45":1876,"_47":2193,"_49":2194,"_51":2195,"_53":54},"WoW7Eg8x",{"_176":177},[],"4",{"_37":2197,"_39":2268},[2198,2205,2212,2219,2226,2233,2240,2247,2254,2261],{"_37":2199,"_39":2200},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2201,"_45":1876,"_47":2202,"_49":2203,"_51":2204,"_53":54},"dbVFL4fA",{},[],"The scientist, however, is not the only person who manipulates data and examines the world about him by the use of logical processes, although he sometimes preserves this appearance by adopting into the fold anyone who becomes logical, much in the manner in which a British labor leader is elevated to knighthood. 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. Formal logic used to be a keen instrument in the hands of the teacher in his trying of students' souls. It is readily possible to construct a machine which will manipulate premises in accordance with formal logic, simply by the clever use of relay circuits. Put a set of premises into such a device and turn the crank, and it will readily pass out conclusion after conclusion, all in accordance with logical law, and with no more slips than would be expected of a keyboard adding machine.",{"_37":2206,"_39":2207},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2208,"_45":1876,"_47":2209,"_49":2210,"_51":2211,"_53":54},"qI7bXze9",{},[],"Logic can become enormously difficult, and it would undoubtedly be well to produce more assurance in its use. The machines for higher analysis have usually been equation solvers. Ideas are beginning to appear for equation transformers, which will rearrange the relationship expressed by an equation in accordance with strict and rather advanced logic. Progress is inhibited by the exceedingly crude way in which mathematicians express their relationships. They employ a symbolism which grew like Topsy and has little consistency; a strange fact in that most logical field.",{"_37":2213,"_39":2214},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2215,"_45":1876,"_47":2216,"_49":2217,"_51":2218,"_53":54},"2DeyUdzh",{},[],"A new symbolism, probably positional, must apparently precede the reduction of mathematical transformations to machine processes. Then, on beyond the strict logic of the mathematician, lies the application of logic in everyday affairs. We may some day click off arguments on a machine with the same assurance that we now enter sales on a cash register. But the machine of logic will not look like a cash register, even of the streamlined model.",{"_37":2220,"_39":2221},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2222,"_45":1876,"_47":2223,"_49":2224,"_51":2225,"_53":54},"KBnJ0-B0",{},[],"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. This is a much larger matter than merely the extraction of data for the purposes of scientific research; it involves the entire process by which man profits by his inheritance of acquired knowledge. The prime action of use is selection, and here we are halting indeed. There may be millions of fine thoughts, and the account of the experience on which they are based, all encased within stone walls of acceptable architectural form; 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.",{"_37":2227,"_39":2228},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2229,"_45":1876,"_47":2230,"_49":2231,"_51":2232,"_53":54},"MYDxRxw5",{},[],"Selection, in this broad sense, is a stone adze in the hands of a cabinetmaker. Yet, in a narrow sense and in other areas, something has already been done mechanically on selection. The personnel officer of a factory drops a stack of a few thousand employee cards into a selecting machine, sets a code in accordance with an established convention, and produces in a short time a list of all employees who live in Trenton and know Spanish. Even such devices are much too slow when it comes, for example, to matching a set of fingerprints with one of five million on file. Selection devices of this sort will soon be speeded up from their present rate of reviewing data at a few hundred a minute. By the use of photocells and microfilm they will survey items at the rate of a thousand a second, and will print out duplicates of those selected.",{"_37":2234,"_39":2235},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2236,"_45":1876,"_47":2237,"_49":2238,"_51":2239,"_53":54},"7JIxh6TR",{},[],"This process, however, is simple selection: it proceeds by examining in turn every one of a large set of items, and by picking out those which have certain specified characteristics. There is another form of selection best illustrated by the automatic telephone exchange. You dial a number and the machine selects and connects just one of a million possible stations. It does not run over them all. It pays attention only to a class given by a first digit, then only to a subclass of this given by the second digit, and so on; and thus proceeds rapidly and almost unerringly to the selected station. It requires a few seconds to make the selection, although the process could be speeded up if increased speed were economically warranted. If necessary, it could be made extremely fast by substituting thermionic-tube switching for mechanical switching, so that the full selection could be made in one one-hundredth of a second. No one would wish to spend the money necessary to make this change in the telephone system, but the general idea is applicable elsewhere.",{"_37":2241,"_39":2242},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2243,"_45":1876,"_47":2244,"_49":2245,"_51":2246,"_53":54},"HSwtph6E",{},[],"Take the prosaic problem of the great department store. Every time a charge sale is made, there are a number of things to be done. The inventory needs to be revised, the salesman needs to be given credit for the sale, the general accounts need an entry, and, most important, the customer needs to be charged. A central records device has been developed in which much of this work is done conveniently. The salesman places on a stand the customer's identification card, his own card, and the card taken from the article sold—all punched cards. When he pulls a lever, contacts are made through the holes, machinery at a central point makes the necessary computations and entries, and the proper receipt is printed for the salesman to pass to the customer.",{"_37":2248,"_39":2249},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2250,"_45":1876,"_47":2251,"_49":2252,"_51":2253,"_53":54},"rDkc-rpW",{},[],"But there may be ten thousand charge customers doing business with the store, and before the full operation can be completed someone has to select the right card and insert it at the central office. Now rapid selection can slide just the proper card into position in an instant or two, and return it afterward. Another difficulty occurs, however. Someone must read a total on the card, so that the machine can add its computed item to it. Conceivably the cards might be of the dry photography type I have described. Existing totals could then be read by photocell, and the new total entered by an electron beam.",{"_37":2255,"_39":2256},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2257,"_45":1876,"_47":2258,"_49":2259,"_51":2260,"_53":54},"VnHx8GEY",{},[],"The cards may be in miniature, so that they occupy little space. They must move quickly. They need not be transferred far, but merely into position so that the photocell and recorder can operate on them. Positional dots can enter the data. At the end of the month a machine can readily be made to read these and to print an ordinary bill. With tube selection, in which no mechanical parts are involved in the switches, little time need be occupied in bringing the correct card into use—a second should suffice for the entire operation. The whole record on the card may be made by magnetic dots on a steel sheet if desired, instead of dots to be observed optically, following the scheme by which Poulsen long ago put speech on a magnetic wire. This method has the advantage of simplicity and ease of erasure. By using photography, however one can arrange to project the record in enlarged form and at a distance by using the process common in television equipment.",{"_37":2262,"_39":2263},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2264,"_45":1876,"_47":2265,"_49":2266,"_51":2267,"_53":54},"Bl9S1vY0",{},[],"One can consider rapid selection of this form, and distant projection for other purposes. To be able to key one sheet of a million before an operator in a second or two, with the possibility of then adding notes thereto, is suggestive in many ways. It might even be of use in libraries, but that is another story. At any rate, there are now some interesting combinations possible. One might, for example, speak to a microphone, in the manner described in connection with the speech controlled typewriter, and thus make his selections. It would certainly beat the usual file clerk.",{"_41":58,"_43":2269,"_45":1876,"_47":2270,"_49":2271,"_51":2272,"_53":54},"823Fb4_N",{"_176":177},[],"5",{"_37":2274,"_39":2338},[2275,2282,2289,2296,2303,2310,2317,2324,2331],{"_37":2276,"_39":2277},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2278,"_45":1876,"_47":2279,"_49":2280,"_51":2281,"_53":54},"-UV4qKcD",{},[],"The real heart of the matter of selection, however, goes deeper than a lag in the adoption of mechanisms by libraries, or a lack of development of devices for their use. Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing. When data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. It can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having found one item, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path.",{"_37":2283,"_39":2284},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2285,"_45":1876,"_47":2286,"_49":2287,"_51":2288,"_53":54},"BYXDVRVK",{},[],"The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature.",{"_37":2290,"_39":2291},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2292,"_45":1876,"_47":2293,"_49":2294,"_51":2295,"_53":54},"cwjOO8BP",{},[],"Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental process artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it. In minor ways he may even improve, for his records have relative permanency. The first idea, however, to be drawn from the analogy concerns selection. Selection by association, rather than indexing, may yet be mechanized. One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which the mind follows an associative trail, but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage.",{"_37":2297,"_39":2298},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2299,"_45":1876,"_47":2300,"_49":2301,"_51":2302,"_53":54},"AqGRgRAh",{},[],"Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, “memex” will do. A 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. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.",{"_37":2304,"_39":2305},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2306,"_45":1876,"_47":2307,"_49":2308,"_51":2309,"_53":54},"TfWCAxXp",{},[],"It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.",{"_37":2311,"_39":2312},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2313,"_45":1876,"_47":2314,"_49":2315,"_51":2316,"_53":54},"Ji-nrzmR",{},[],"In one end is the stored material. The matter of bulk is well taken care of by improved microfilm. Only a small part of the interior of the memex is devoted to storage, the rest to mechanism. Yet if the user inserted 5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill the repository, so he can be profligate and enter material freely.",{"_37":2318,"_39":2319},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2320,"_45":1876,"_47":2321,"_49":2322,"_51":2323,"_53":54},"jYxXQch-",{},[],"Most of the memex contents are purchased on microfilm ready for insertion. Books of all sorts, pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus obtained and dropped into place. Business correspondence takes the same path. And there is provision for direct entry. On the top of the memex is a transparent platen. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, all sorts of things. When one is in place, the depression of a lever causes it to be photographed onto the next blank space in a section of the memex film, dry photography being employed.",{"_37":2325,"_39":2326},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2327,"_45":1876,"_47":2328,"_49":2329,"_51":2330,"_53":54},"3lraYLjj",{},[],"There is, of course, provision for consultation of the record by the usual scheme of indexing. 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, projected onto one of his viewing positions. Frequently-used codes are mnemonic, so that he seldom consults his code book; but when he does, a single tap of a key projects it for his use. Moreover, he has supplemental levers. On deflecting one of these levers to the right he runs through the book before him, each page in turn being projected at a speed which just allows a recognizing glance at each. If he deflects it further to the right, he steps through the book 10 pages at a time; still further at 100 pages at a time. Deflection to the left gives him the same control backwards.",{"_37":2332,"_39":2333},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2334,"_45":1876,"_47":2335,"_49":2336,"_51":2337,"_53":54},"EN57UWfJ",{},[],"A special button transfers him immediately to the first page of the index. Any given book of his library can thus be called up and consulted with far greater facility than if it were taken from a shelf. As he has several projection positions, he can leave one item in position while he calls up another. He can add marginal notes and comments, taking advantage of one possible type of dry photography, and it could even be arranged so that he can do this by a stylus scheme, such as is now employed in the telautograph seen in railroad waiting rooms, just as though he had the physical page before him.",{"_41":58,"_43":2339,"_45":1876,"_47":2340,"_49":2341,"_51":2342,"_53":54},"hE72EiW7",{"_176":177},[],"6",{"_37":2344,"_39":2380},[2345,2352,2359,2366,2373],{"_37":2346,"_39":2347},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2348,"_45":1876,"_47":2349,"_49":2350,"_51":2351,"_53":54},"TlXiaXp1",{},[],"All this is conventional, except for the projection forward of present-day mechanisms and gadgetry. It affords an immediate step, however, to associative indexing, the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another. This is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing.",{"_37":2353,"_39":2354},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2355,"_45":1876,"_47":2356,"_49":2357,"_51":2358,"_53":54},"h2eYi2q9",{},[],"When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. At the bottom of each there are a number of blank code spaces, and a pointer is set to indicate one of these on each item. The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined. In each code space appears the code word. Out of view, but also in the code space, is inserted a set of dots for photocell viewing; and on each item these dots by their positions designate the index number of the other item.",{"_37":2360,"_39":2361},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2362,"_45":1876,"_47":2363,"_49":2364,"_51":2365,"_53":54},"rkpILk1-",{},[],"Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space. Moreover, when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn, rapidly or slowly, by deflecting a lever like that used for turning the pages of a book. It is exactly as though the physical items had been gathered together from widely separated sources and bound together to form a new book. It is more than this, for any item can be joined into numerous trails.",{"_37":2367,"_39":2368},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2369,"_45":1876,"_47":2370,"_49":2371,"_51":2372,"_53":54},"K-wqZnlN",{},[],"The owner of the memex, let us say, is interested in the origin and properties of the bow and arrow. Specifically he is studying why the short Turkish bow was apparently superior to the English long bow in the skirmishes of the Crusades. He has dozens of possibly pertinent books and articles in his memex. First he runs through an encyclopedia, finds an interesting but sketchy article, leaves it projected. Next, in a history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the two together. Thus he goes, building a trail of many items. Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either linking it into the main trail or joining it by a side trail to a particular item. When it becomes evident that the elastic properties of available materials had a great deal to do with the bow, he branches off on a side trail which takes him through textbooks on elasticity and tables of physical constants. He inserts a page of longhand analysis of his own. Thus he builds a trail of his interest through the maze of materials available to him.",{"_37":2374,"_39":2375},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2376,"_45":1876,"_47":2377,"_49":2378,"_51":2379,"_53":54},"DAwmGiOq",{},[],"And his trails do not fade. Several years later, his talk with a friend turns to the queer ways in which a people resist innovations, even of vital interest. He has an example, in the fact that the outraged Europeans still failed to adopt the Turkish bow. In fact he has a trail on it. A touch brings up the code book. Tapping a few keys projects the head of the trail. A lever runs through it at will, stopping at interesting items, going off on side excursions. It is an interesting trail, pertinent to the discussion. So he sets a reproducer in action, photographs the whole trail out, and passes it to his friend for insertion in his own memex, there to be linked into the more general trail.",{"_41":58,"_43":2381,"_45":1876,"_47":2382,"_49":2383,"_51":2384,"_53":54},"p1OJYYyQ",{"_176":177},[],"7",{"_37":2386,"_39":2457},[2387,2394,2401,2408,2415,2422,2429,2436,2443,2450],{"_37":2388,"_39":2389},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2390,"_45":1876,"_47":2391,"_49":2392,"_51":2393,"_53":54},"aJ5f5jF5",{},[],"Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities. The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client’s interest. The physician, puzzled by a patient’s reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. The chemist, struggling with the synthesis of an organic compound, has all the chemical literature before him in his laboratory, with trails following the analogies of compounds, and side trails to their physical and chemical behavior.",{"_37":2395,"_39":2396},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2397,"_45":1876,"_47":2398,"_49":2399,"_51":2400,"_53":54},"CrI3YWur",{},[],"The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only on the salient items, and can follow at any time contemporary trails which lead him all over civilization at a particular epoch. There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world's record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected.",{"_37":2402,"_39":2403},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2404,"_45":1876,"_47":2405,"_49":2406,"_51":2407,"_53":54},"U_9LaT7O",{},[],"Thus science may implement the ways in which man produces, stores, and consults the record of the race. It might be striking to outline the instrumentalities of the future more spectacularly, rather than to stick closely to methods and elements now known and undergoing rapid development, as has been done here. Technical difficulties of all sorts have been ignored, certainly, but also ignored are means as yet unknown which may come any day to accelerate technical progress as violently as did the advent of the thermionic tube. In order that the picture may not be too commonplace, by reason of sticking to present-day patterns, it may be well to mention one such possibility, not to prophesy but merely to suggest, for prophecy based on extension of the known has substance, while prophecy founded on the unknown is only a doubly involved guess.",{"_37":2409,"_39":2410},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2411,"_45":1876,"_47":2412,"_49":2413,"_51":2414,"_53":54},"rbCVLzDH",{},[],"All our steps in creating or absorbing material of the record proceed through one of the senses—the tactile when we touch keys, the oral when we speak or listen, the visual when we read. Is it not possible that some day the path may be established more directly?",{"_37":2416,"_39":2417},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2418,"_45":1876,"_47":2419,"_49":2420,"_51":2421,"_53":54},"tUjyp4qQ",{},[],"We know that when the eye sees, all the consequent information is transmitted to the brain by means of electrical vibrations in the channel of the optic nerve. This is an exact analogy with the electrical vibrations which occur in the cable of a television set: they convey the picture from the photocells which see it to the radio transmitter from which it is broadcast. We know further that if we can approach that cable with the proper instruments, we do not need to touch it; we can pick up those vibrations by electrical induction and thus discover and reproduce the scene which is being transmitted, just as a telephone wire may be tapped for its message.",{"_37":2423,"_39":2424},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2425,"_45":1876,"_47":2426,"_49":2427,"_51":2428,"_53":54},"tRsbCa9_",{},[],"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?",{"_37":2430,"_39":2431},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2432,"_45":1876,"_47":2433,"_49":2434,"_51":2435,"_53":54},"-RUSQJGe",{},[],"By bone conduction we already introduce sounds: into the nerve channels of the deaf in order that they may hear. Is it not possible that we may learn to introduce them without the present cumbersomeness of first transforming electrical vibrations to mechanical ones, which the human mechanism promptly transforms back to the electrical form? With a couple of electrodes on the skull the encephalograph now produces pen-and-ink traces which bear some relation to the electrical phenomena going on in the brain itself. True, the record is unintelligible, except as it points out certain gross misfunctioning of the cerebral mechanism; but who would now place bounds on where such a thing may lead?",{"_37":2437,"_39":2438},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2439,"_45":1876,"_47":2440,"_49":2441,"_51":2442,"_53":54},"DOt3yVEX",{},[],"In the outside world, all forms of intelligence whether of sound or sight, have been reduced to the form of varying currents in an electric circuit in order that they may be transmitted. Inside the human frame exactly the same sort of process occurs. Must we always transform to mechanical movements in order to proceed from one electrical phenomenon to another? It is a suggestive thought, but it hardly warrants prediction without losing touch with reality and immediateness.",{"_37":2444,"_39":2445},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2446,"_45":1876,"_47":2447,"_49":2448,"_51":2449,"_53":54},"O9yaYqlH",{},[],"Presumably man’s spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems. He 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. 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.",{"_37":2451,"_39":2452},[],{"_41":42,"_43":2453,"_45":1876,"_47":2454,"_49":2455,"_51":2456,"_53":54},"xlkEDzl2",{},[],"The applications of science have built man a well-supplied house, and are teaching him to live healthily therein. They have enabled him to throw masses of people against one another with cruel weapons. They may yet allow him truly to encompass the great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience. He may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record for his true good. Yet, in the application of science to the needs and desires of man, it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which to terminate the process, or to lose hope as to the outcome.",{"_41":58,"_43":2458,"_45":1876,"_47":2459,"_49":2460,"_51":2461,"_53":54},"08ZdhY57",{"_176":177},[],"8","bafy2bzaceaqvup7xqozrjgf5aadd7ud7bey44u5zmekpj3w76qscejbnnc4gy",[823],"/as-we-may-think","2024-10-22T15:30:30.794Z","2025-04-22T08:01:06.012Z",{"_831":2468,"_1570":2469,"_1571":1848,"_2470":2471,"_2472":6},"As We May Think","ipfs://bafkreifcguhhy25v7x5res6oan63riafplq52qmx2t5zkme5mhn5nicwke","displayPublishTime","1945-07-02","showOutline",{},"bafy2bzacedmimdqfu2cexkqm6y2mlg4cggvgq6nalwzsn2ffpnnjy7an435ae",{"_835":2474,"_838":1613},{"_43":2477,"_848":823,"_824":2478,"_818":2462,"_850":2299,"_851":2480,"_852":-5,"_853":2482,"_847":30},"hm://z6MkrbYsRzKb1VABdvhsDSAk6JK8fAszKsyHhcaZigYeWCou/as-we-may-think",[2479],"as-we-may-think",{"_2481":30},"expanded","hm",1776850436379,[1438,2477,2462,30],"[\"ENTITY\",\"hm://z6MkrbYsRzKb1VABdvhsDSAk6JK8fAszKsyHhcaZigYeWCou/as-we-may-think\",\"bafy2bzaceaqvup7xqozrjgf5aadd7ud7bey44u5zmekpj3w76qscejbnnc4gy\",false]",{"_863":2487,"_1436":2508,"_1439":2510},{"_865":2488,"_1420":1421,"_1422":2507,"_1424":-5,"_1425":1426,"_1427":1426,"_1428":1426,"_1429":-5,"_1430":-5,"_1431":30,"_1432":1433,"_1434":1435},{"_41":819,"_43":2489,"_829":2493},{"_818":2490,"_848":823,"_43":2491,"_824":2492,"_850":-5,"_851":-5,"_852":-5,"_853":-5},"bafy2bzaceard7t4wrqhqzizymqwow34l7foxc5yn2ihqapmwys4qs5mnmalzm","hm://z6MkrbYsRzKb1VABdvhsDSAk6JK8fAszKsyHhcaZigYeWCou",[],{"_831":2494,"_1570":2495,"_2496":2495,"_1571":2497,"_1573":2498,"_1575":54,"_2470":2499,"_2500":54,"_2501":30,"_1680":1681,"_2502":2503,"_2506":-5},"Gabo H Beaumont","ipfs://bafkreifg4zwc2bidz3zuddxbld6dzeq5xfmbfhrzgx4hpj5bkxqtw6mgku","thumbnail","ipfs://bafybeiguwj7jll23xgh37usasgzapg7n5x2xfbzyat3jyrdthmwv2mufe4","https://gabo.es","2025-01-21","seedExperimentalLogo","showActivity","theme",{"_2504":2505},"headerLayout","Center","summary",1776850436367,[2509,823],"ACCOUNT","[\"ACCOUNT\",\"z6MkrbYsRzKb1VABdvhsDSAk6JK8fAszKsyHhcaZigYeWCou\"]","ssrContentHTML","

Theodor H. Nelson\nThis paper was presented at the International Conference on online interactive computing held at Brunei University, Uxbridge, England, September 4-7,1972.

Abstract

Bush was right. His famous article is, however, generally misinterpreted, for it has little to do with "information retrieval" as prosecuted today. Bush rejected indexing and discussed instead new forms of interwoven documents.

It is possible that Bush's vision will be fulfilled substantially as he saw it, and that information retrieval systems of the kinds now popular will see less use than anticipated.

As the technological base has changed, we must recast his thesis slightly, and regard Bush's "memex" as three things: the personal presentation, editing and file console; a digital feeder network for the delivery of documents in full-text digital form; and new types of documents, or hypertexts, which are especially worth receiving and sending in this manner.

In addition, we also consider a likely design for specialist hypertexts, and discuss problems of their publication.

Beating Around the Bush

Twenty-seven years ago, in a widely acclaimed article, Vannevar Bush made certain predictions about the way we of the future would handle written information (1). We are not yet doing so. Yet the Bush article is often cited as the historical beginning, or as a technological watershed, of the field of information retrieval. It is frequently cited without interpretation (2,3). Although some commentators have said its predictions were improbable (4), in general its precepts have been ignored by acclamation.

In this paper, an effort in counter-discipleship, I hope to remind readers of what Bush did and did not say, and point out what is not yet recognized: that much of what he predicted is possible now; the memex is here; the "trails" he spoke of—suitably generalized, and now called hypertexts—may, and should, become the principal publishing form of the future.

In July of 1945 an article entitled "As We May Think," by Vannevar Bush, was published in the Atlantic Monthly. It bristled with technical references but was actually fairly candid and simple.

It predicted many things. Bush, as director of Roosevelt's wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development, had seen the new ways in which technologies could be combined. In the urbane paragraphs of this article, Bush predicted a variety of useful future machines, including improvements in photography, facsimile systems, computers and miscellany. Depending on how you read it, he predicted, as well as you could hope, devices closely related to the Polaroid camera, the Xerox machine, computer transformation of mathematical expressions, and the telephone company's ESS switching system.

But the article is best remembered for its description of the new ways that scientists and scholars could handle and share their ideas, writing, reading and filing in a magical system at their desks. The system is the famous "memex."

$\"\"$

As We May Think

“Consider a future 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. It is a

$\"\"$

As We May Think

The memex will hold all the writings its master wants to read, and he can read them easily.

$\"\"$

As We May Think

Moreover, he can compare and annotate them.

$\"\"$

As We May Think

Not only ordinary documents need be held in the memex. The user may make connections between different parts of the things stored. He does this by

$\"\"$

As We May Think

By this associative technique he may create "trails," new documentary objects that are useful in new ways.

$\"\"$

As We May Think

These new structures, or trails, may be taken and given to other people.

$\"\"$

As We May Think

And they may be published.

$\"\"$

As We May Think

It is strange that "As We May Think" has been taken so to heart in the field of information retrieval, since it runs counter to virtually all work being pursued under the name of information retrieval today. Such systems are principally concerned either with indexing conventional documents by content, or with somehow representing that content in a way that can be mechanically searched and deciphered.

This is indeed paradoxical. On the one hand, Bush did not think well of indexing.

$\"\"$

As We May Think

On the other hand, with regard to content retrieval. Bush merely hinted about the use of structured-data representations and calculi in storing ideas (105, col. 2, para. 3), and did not plainly relate them to his mail exposition. The reason is plain: his real emphasis was on linkage, an£ new structures and activities that the automatic link-jump would mak( possible. While we might argue scripture about such matters, the fact L that Bush's most extensive concern has had few successors in the fielf called "information retrieval."

Transposition

The memex was to be a single screen console for handling the user's notes, writing and correspondence, for reading books and other writ¬ ings created by others, and for creating new associative text structures, which may in their turn be read and distributed. All this I take to be the heart of Bush's prediction. This will happen. Such systems exist; they are approaching cost feasibility; and the world is readier than it thinks.

Bush's machine will not, of course, be built exactly as he foresaw. The complete description, which I omitted, involves microfilm cas¬ settes, a photographic copying plate for adding new images to the microfilm file, and a telautograph stylus. Other machines he describes, such as the forehead camera and the direct-dictation typing machine, might or might not have been coupled to it as well. In the revised version of the article (5) his emphasis shifted to videotape. These impedimenta we ignore. There exist microfilm cassettes, copiers and so on, but the hardware ready to support a memex-class system will be something else.

The system will be built from existing computer equipment and peripherals. Physically it will be a computer display, with a keyboard, at the user's desk; a support computer system (at the desk or elsewhere) for handling various technical chores; and a library network of digital feeder machines. The written materials, when not shown on the screen, will be stored and sent digitally, as telegraphic symbolg.’They will be sent back and forth among these systems automatically, as programmed in the various devices. The trails, or associative text structures—more generally called "hypertexts"—will be stored in coded form, along with, the more conventional documents in the various devices. The user will be billed automatically for the services and the delivery of copyrighted materials. The publisher, who maintains these copyrighted materials in the feeder machines, will be duly paid for their use.

Prototype units exist now. Appropriate console hardware can be purchased now for about $15,000.

Supply systems, however, are not quite ready. The best supply system may be a special-purpose computer or a general-purpose time¬ sharing pyitem; which is better is not clear. While costs of either are presently in thi tSAB or hundreds of thousands, they are coming down fast, and the use of a well-tailored system by many people at once should bring down the cost of such service down considerably. To name a figure arbitrarily, let us say that a service cost of $100 a month per user (exclusive of telephone lines and copyright) would be suffi¬ ciently low to draw many users. Such service at such a cost will surely be generally available between one and five years from now.

Various preoccupations have delayed us psychologically. We do not need direct dictation, optical scanning or the availability (sic) of vast libraries for such systems to be immediately practical and important to us.

The Console

We are speaking of a single console to handle notes, writing, much correspondence, much reading, and the creation of new kinds of texts. On it the user must be able to view, edit, file, and otherwise manipulate.

Let me now describe a system for various kinds of text handling, the Xanadu Parallel Textface™. XANADU™ is a system presently under development as a turnkey computer graphics console for non-technical users. A stand-alone system, it is built on a minicomputer with disk and / or cassette tape, vectoring display screen, and keyboard. A variety of unusual programming techniques permit various types of screen animation, as well as automatic retrieval and data-base editing in the undersystem; these automatically service different user front ends, faces or theaters. Foremost among these theaters is the Parallel Textface, a text system of some power and delicacy.

Many of its features exist in other text handling systems, notably that of Douglas C. Engelbart at Stanford Research Institute (6). The purpose of this description is to show parallelisms between memex and this general type of system, not to distinguish this system from its relatives.

I will speak of the Xanadu hypertext system, or Parallel Textface, simply as "the system," "the current system" or the like, to distinguish it from the memex. As its implementation is not yet complete, this description applies to the present specifications and not only the parts that are working. We will note some resemblances to the memex.

The user sits at a display screen with a typewriter keyboard, a light pen or other pointing tool, and various optional controls. With these he may read, explore, annotate, write and revise. Storage is of course digital rather than pictorial; the system may manipulate the words letter by letter, rather than as a single image.

In basic editorial operations, the system presents text materials on the screen; the user may command basic writing and editing actions by simple manipulations. Indeed, he may make these editorial changes tentatively, on copies or alternative versions of the material; and he may, at his option, have his actions recorded automatically in a cumu¬ lative editorial log, in case it is later necessary to retract any of them.

Bush did not really go into memex editorial operations, but of course there was that keyboard. It is interesting to note that the memex described in the revised version of Bush's article (5) kept a log of manipulations by the user. (95-6)

The system is generally geared to tentative and thoughtful opera¬ tion. The alternative versions and editorial log are the strongest ex¬ amples, but there are others. An editing command may be retracted if its results do not please. Another example: a section of text being tried in a new place is shown glowing more brightly, so you know its limits within the new setting.

The user of Bush's memex called its contents by means of a "code book" (107 passim )—but this too was actually stored in the system. From the code book the user was to choose contents for yiewing^with a single tap of the key," as mentioned earlier. In the current system it is possible lor the user to call something to the screen by picking the name from a screen menu or relational diagram with the light pen. Fie may do this not just with whole units, but also with subparts and different ver- v sions—separate copies—of documents being tentatively edited.

In the memex, the user could skip through a document at adjustable rates (107, col. 1, para. 5). In the current system he may zip forward through the text at whatever speed he chooses, watching it slide on the screen. (The necessity of smooth, incremental text motion for the CRT is not yet generally recognized.)

The memex user looked at several documents simultaneously through several screens or panels of the same screen (107, col. 1, para, 6). This simultaneous viewing will be possible for several documents on the Parallel Textface; indeed, explicit linkages between associated texts may be viewed on request. This is the notion of "parallel text," useful for commentaries, translations, intercomparisons of documents and much else. These facilities correspond rather well, I think, to Bush's "marginal notes and comments" between the "several projection posi¬ tions."

The memex user created annotations by hand, or links between the things that were being viewed simultaneously. This is possible on the current system, which allows the user to create links between text sections regardless of whether or not they are parts of the same unit or otherwise related. These may be between parallel texts, or among free- floating paragraphs (discrete or "free" hypertexts), or in virtually any other useful arrangement.

For any system of this kind, design problems arise in the richer operations, such as creating and modifying connective structures. It is taken for granted that the console must be easy to use. That is no design problem for a small set of operations, such as text editing. But the design of the overall file handling elements and actions is more complicated. There are two problems. The first is how to achieve the desired perfor¬ mance values on available equipment and accepted software setting. This becomes a tradeoff. The grander problem, though, is conceptual unification for the system's filing structure and conventions.

In the current system there is presently only one type of connector. This restriction nevertheless permits a system sufficient to support real hypertext experimentation. Complex or annotated couplings are pres¬ ently not defined. However, simple links are adequate for various possible forms of discrete-jump hypertexts, including Bush trails, and may in principle be extended to computer responsibility for link behav¬ iors and complex coupling maintenance.

Hypertexts

While Bush's term, "trail," represents a very useful concept, we must generalize it. Bush's interest in microfilm led to his idea of the trail having a sequence.

By "trail," Bush appears to have meant a sequence of document*^ document excerpts, and comment! upon them.

For [the user] runs through an encyclopedia, finds an interesting but sketchy article, leaves it projected. Next, in a history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the two together. Thus he goes, building a trail of many items. (107, col. 2, para. 4)

This sequence would be established by making paired couplings.

When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined projected onto adjacent viewing positions.... The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined. (107, col. 2, para. 2)

Bush mentions two other types of trail. One is the "side trail," branching out from a main trail sequence.

Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either linking it into the main trail or joining it by a side trail to a particular item.

The other type of trail is the "skip trail," a subset of a main trail sequence that contains the highlights.

The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only on the salient items, and can follow at any time contemporary trails which lead him all over civilization at a particular epoch. (108, col. 1, para. 1)

In Bush's trails, the user had no choices to make as he moved through the sequence of items, except at an intersection of trails. With computer storage, however, no sequence need be imposed on the material; and, instead of simply storing materials in their order of arrival or of being noticed, it will be possible to create overall structures of greater useful? complexity. These may have, for instance, patterns of branches in various directions. Such non-sequential or complex text structures we may call "hypertexts." (7)

"Hypertext" is the generic term; there are reasons, for which there Is no room here, to rule out such other candidate terms as "branching text," "graph-structured text," "complex text" and "tree text."

The best current definition of hypertext, over quite a broad range of types, is "text Structure that cannot be conveniently printed." This is not very specific profound, but it fits best.

As Bush pointed out in his own terms, we think in hypertext (106, col. 2). We have been speaking hypertext all our lives and never known it. It is usually only in writing that we must pick thoughts up and irrelevantly put them down in the sequence demanded by the printed word. Writing is a process of making the tree of thought into a picket fence.

Hypertext structures are varied. For instance, they may be free- branching with only one type of link and backing up; they may have modal links with different meanings in a free structure; or have modal links and repetitive structure.

Discrete-jump hypertexts are not the only kinds. There is, for example. Stretchtext™. This is continuously variable text which never leaves the screen, but changes by small increments on user demand, growing longer and more detailed by a few words at a time, as required. Other continuous types are possible.

Just as items may be coupled, whole hypertexts may be coupled into books, or one another. An example of the first would be a hypertext with annotations coupling into the Bible. Such multi-couplings involve bundles of pointers between the texts, possibly with type codes or annotations. (In the current system the non-annotated multicoupler is the canonical case between files.) They may also involve alternative versions, which there is no room to discuss here. The structuring of these coupler types is a continuing design task for hypertext systems.

The creator of hypertexts may allow the user various options of jumping or branching. These options can lead the user to further reading in any pattern the author wants to make available to him. The only constraints on the author are usefulness, clarity, and artfulness.

There must, of course, be ways the reader may see, and choose among, possible branches from an item in the text. This problem was | implicit in Bush's treatment. Since "any item can be joined into numer¬ ous trails" (107, col. 2, para. 3) there would have had to be some way of j showing the user these options and their meaning. This is the case in] general, and a standing aspect of hypertext system design.

Hypertexts may be casual rough notes, as described in Bush'l extended example of the Turkish bow and arrow; or they may at th@| other extreme be finished units, editorially completed and organized* Such finished units would have many of the same properties as binary writing: intentional assembly, attempted clarity and expository structure of enumerable "points," and an overall comprehensible pat¬ tern whose interrelated parts may be in some way remembered or visualized. Finally, the concept of authorship applies to hypertexts as much as it does to an ordinary book or article.

As with ordinary texts, too, the editorial properties and "feel" of hypertexts may be quite distinct and varied. For hypertexts these are of course largely unexplored. It is also very hard to anticipate their possible administrative and social settings, and this will greatly affect their character and the modes of their use.

The Transmission Network

A general transmission network will carry requested documents from libraries to users, new documents from users to libraries, and commu¬ nications and documents between users.

The network will consist of several computers or computer-like objects. In the user's own unit is digital logic, and possibly (as in our Xanadu) a small computer; if not, this unit is serviced or managed by a computer which stores the user's files and communicates with the library network. The user's requests for documents that are not avail¬ able locally go out to a library network. These requests are sorted out to the appropriate repository machine; the repository machine returns the document and a bill or fee schedule.

Various fees are logged up to the user. These will include various basic costs, such as membership in the system, rental of the terminal and hookup. Additional fees may include logged-in time, per-usage costs of s ' various facilities (such as average memory area occupied and quanti¬ ties of text moved), storage charges for materials kept locally, and royalties to copyright holders. It should be noted that various grades of service may also exist, in which the user gets faster service by claiming larger buffers and higher priorities, and pays for the privilege.

A1 though this may sound like a formidable prospect, in general and with polishing there is reason to hope that the real costs of such a system will compete favorably with the real costs of the forms of publication and libraries we now employ. (Of course, in such "real cost" we must include the library services supplied "free" by various levels of govern¬ ment, including municipal libraries, grants to universities and the indirect subsidy of publishers by low postal rates. It is not unthinkable that similar encouragement will come about for this form of publishing and libraryship.)

Various technical design issues exist. These involve the feeder computers and their forms of memory. These hierarchies of memory are fairly clear. They will generally include disk (for working areas and directories), magnetic card or data cell (for the corpus), and magnetic tape (for rarely-needed materials and safety copies). Immense solid- state memories will never take over completely unless they are cheaper.

A more difficult question is, what should the feeder computers be? Their job in this system is the lookup and shovelling of text, plus book¬ keeping. One school of thought holds that a true general-purpose time¬ sharing system is necessary; another, that the correct machine is a dedicated computer with rich interrupts and comparatively little arith¬ metic capacity. The third school would point out the special character of the work and lean toward special designs and special tradeoffs, which could be anything from associative memory to the use of delay¬ line machines.

Similar issues exist for memory software and directory systems. There are complex technical problems of index and search techniques, and methods of their cross-tabulation. But they can be handled in some way or other.

A warning is necessary here, however. This area of console support is the area where things are not yet ready. The prediction of economic feasibility in five years, an eon in the computer world, is not the same as feasibility now. By devoting a whole computer, disk and tape to each user, the problem of console support can now be solved, in a manner of speaking; but the general problem of interleaved I/O and file manage¬ ment, with the efficient sharing of facilities, is another problem entirely, and the one that must be solved to make this whole thing go.

Publication: Redesign of the Technical Literature

Bush regarded his new text structures as transmissible between indi¬ viduals, and publishable. The same is true of hypertext units, the generalized form of trails. I think it likely that once such systems are available, the creation of branching and complex text will become recognized as far more natural than the structures in which we now must write.

This will all follow naturally from the existence of consoles which permit multiple couplings between texts. Having created for personal use a hyper-document on one's console, it will seem only reasonable to press a button passing this on to a colleague in its hyper-form, without chopping and aligning it into conventional writing.

Various interesting possibilities follow. Private "journals" in a field may be started among co-workers merely by the pooling of their hyper¬ documents. The rental of memory space on magnetic cards is inconse¬ quential next to what have been the costs of printing and mailing.

When professional and technical societies become interested in sponsoring hyper-publication, one of the most straightforward ways to begin would be with the creation of society-sponsored review articles. These could be like the ordinary review articles sponsored by such societies, save that the review article would open directly into the various materials it was reviewing, and footnotes could be more extensive and slanted to different categories of reader. (Eigure 1.)

$\"\"$

The next step is, of course, the creation of hyper-magazines or journals under the sponsorship and supervision of professional societ¬ ies. Here the problem of organization would seem to become thorny. But this collection could be much like the journals of today, except for the direct availability of previous literature, working papers and vari¬ ous odds and ends. It should be observed that any of the "documents" noted in the illustration can themselves be hypertexts. (Figure 2.)

$\"\"$

In this magazine, an arbitrary conjecture, all material of the past year is considered "recent" and embraced in a common lookup struc¬ ture. New material enters the collection surreptitiously, at whatever time of day or night the editors release it; material one year old is formally expelled to a different file on the first of each month. (It may be just as accessible, but its nominal status changes, rather like that of a book taken off the "recent acquisitions" list of a library.) This maga¬ zine would hold most of what people were talking about in a field, and it would all be right there.

There are numerous technical complications to hypertext publish¬ ing. There is no room here to discuss the more esoteric technical ones, such as facilities, billing and copyright conventions, or possible techniques of encryption and validation to prevent pirating of works and to authenticate expeditionary versions.

How to Begin

How shall it begin?

Those contemplating massive retrieval systems commonly pre¬ sume that they must begin with some massive corpus all accessible. The Library of Congress is often mentioned. Even Bush supposes regret¬ fully (in the revised article, p. 100) that the personal system waits on large public establishments being automated first.

I do not believe this is so. It will be practicable and of considerable interest to begin on a small scale, having no grand corpus available. The grand corpus will come soon enough, as requests emerge. (We have a precedent: the prowess of University Microfilms, Inc. in rendering texts available to scholars in microfilm.)

The way to begin is to furnish supported consoles to small commu¬ nities of users: key members of a "small" discipline, or specialists among whose work there is close connection. Suitable groups might be "early Egyptologists," or just plain "everybody at Woods Hole."

Such communicants, having been assured as well as possible of privacy and fail-safe design, will be encouraged to use the consoles fully. From the outset they may keep all their notes, manuscripts, articles, and copies of outgoing correspondence, on the system.

The rest will follow. I am fairly sure of the predictions so far, at least in broad outline, but I am just as sure that the first generation of hypertext users will invent twice as much as has been descried and described so far.

Who will support these beginnings? We have a choice, at the outset, of universities, publishing companies, computer companies (including service bureaux), research organizations or the government. Any of these might take such an initiative. Though such an initiative would seem severally unthinkable, it somehow seems collectively plausible and, of course, historically inevitable. If you believe in manifest destiny.

Theodor H. Nelson

Endnotes

Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think." The Atlantic Monthly 176:1 (July, 1945), 101-108. References to "Bush" cite this article unless further specified, and all unexplained numbers and paginations in the text refer to it. Because the article is so tightly written and our interest in it so close, paginations are given to the column and paragraph.
Allen Kent, Textbook on Mechanized Information Retrieval , second edition. Wiley, 1966; pp. 7-9.
Joseph Becker and Robert M. Hayes, Information Storage and Retrieval: Tools, Elements, Theories. Wiley, 1963; p. 40.
John H. Wilson, "As We May Have Thought." In Progress in Information Science and Technology: Proceedings of the American Documentation Institute 1966 Annual Meeting. Adrianne Press, 1966, pp. 117-122.
Vannevar Bush, "Memex Revisited." In Vannevar Bush, Science Is Not Enough. William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1967, 75-101.
Douglas C. Engelbart, "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework." AFOSR-3223 Summary Report, Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park, California, October 1962. This expresses the philosophy, rather than the results, of the continuing project.
Theodor H. Nelson, "Getting It Out of Our System." In George Schechter (ed.). Information Retrieval: A Critical View. Thompson Book Company, 1967; pp. 191-210.

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