"As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush

-1945
-Director of Office of Scientific Research and Development

Benefits of Science
-increased control of material environment
-increased knowledge of biological. physiological and psychological processes
-swifter communication

*expresses demand for speed, accessibility, portability, cost efficiency, mechanization, universality, and versatility

It's interesting to look at the inventions in this article and think about how they would hold up today. On the one hand, some of them seem too simple. Many of them perform one or few functions, resulting in a cumbersome pile of objects with which a person is expected to interact throughout the day. Now, we have access to tools that perform several functions such as the iphone, digital Swiss Army knives that give us access to the worldbank of human knowledge.
On the other hand, many of Bush's ideas are just starting to be put into practice. The introduction mentions Bush's "trails" as an invention that would be incredibly useful, one that would essentially follow and supplement a human's train of thought by approaching it as a hypertext.

A wikipedia article on his Memex machine notes that it wasn't until the use of wiki and social software that people could trace their trajectory and share it.

But it IS happening. With sites like delicious and tools like google wave, one can trace and share his/her trajectory and post it publicly, even hold a conversation in hypertext.

The data is there. It just needs to be framed.

Now. What would happen if we were to take that kind of software, the kind that can trace our trajectories, and apply it to brainscan technology?

And does our desire to hold conversations in hypertext not demonstrate that language, alone, is not enough?