As We May Think - Definition and Overview

Vannevar Bush's essay As We May Think, first published in The Atlantic Monthly in July 1945, argued that as humans turned from war, scientific efforts should shift from increasing physical abilities to making all previous collected human knowledge more accessible.

His article described something in many ways like today's World Wide Web. It also included features still not elegantly available, as of 2005, such as voice-activated automatic dictation.

The system, which he called memex, was described as based on what was thought, at the time, to be the wave of the future: Ultra high resolution microfilm reels, coupled to multiple screen viewers and cameras, by electromechanical controls.

'The Atlantic Monthly' article was followed, in November 1945, by a Life magazine article which showed illustrations of the proposed memex desk and automatic typewriter.

External links

• "As We May Think" - A Celebration of Vannevar Bush's 1945 Vision, at Brown University (http://graphics.cs.brown.edu/html/info/vannevar_bush.html)

online versions of the text of this article

• The text of As we may think (http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/~duchier/pub/vbush/vbush-all.shtml) (accessible without subscription and with permission of Atlantic Monthly)
• Another permitted copy of the article (http://www.cs.sfu.ca/CC/365/mark/material/notes/Chap1/VBushArticle/)
• As we may think from the Atlantic Monthly archives (http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/computer/bushf.htm) (subscription required)