If someone told me ten years ago that I would basically spend half of my day on some sort of computer or cell phone, connected to the internet, I would have told them they were crazy. To say that my generation is addicted to the web, from research tools such as dictionary.com or Google search, to interacting with people around the world via social media, is an understatement. Since the boom of the Internet, which was a blessing and curse if you ask me, we have been sucked into our machines and devices, weighting less than five pounds that spew out any information we desire with the click of a button.
I found Bush’s prediction of the web to be incredibly intriguing. Although technology was on a rise at that time, for someone to have that amount of knowledge toward a concept that was merely on the cusp of invention, is slightly eerie. Bush’s successful attempt to map out how information should be stored and retrieved through databases is the premise of the Internet.
His views may have be seen as radical to some, though, he was a visionary. Bush’s ability to understand that we needed a way to find information through an available source at any time was not something that was previously considered to an extensive degree.
His thought that, “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,” is spot on with how the internet serves our everyday usage of retrieving any information we seek.
His association with how humans are able to track and memorize data is their ability to have what he calls a “private library.” This library is a machine that stores information and links it to its source as well as other information that is similar in sub categories. Sounds a lot like a computer to me.
It will be far more reliable than “any human operator and a thousand times faster.” was his vision for the “meme” he associated a computer with.
Overall, I was impressed by Bush’s otherworldly predictions of what was to come for technology especially the web and computers. I found his reading somewhat dense, though to think about times when computers and the Internet were not the norm, it is hard to believe how far technology has come and will continue to grow with a new wave of devices and apps for that matter.