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In the 1940s, an engineer called Vannevar Bush, who was the dean of the school of engineering at MIT, came up with the idea of the memex. He explained the problem he was trying to solve in an article for The Atlantic. "There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialisation extends," he wrote. "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."

The memex — a device that would store large numbers of documents in compressed format, and would include a form of associative indexing for tying two items together — wasn't technologically feasible at that time. But it inspired inventors Ted Nelson and Douglas Engelbart's 1960s work on independently developed hypertext systems, which became foundational to the development of the world wide web.

Martin Rudorfer, a lecturer in computer science, writes for @TheConversationUS about the influence of the memex, and the importance of Bush's message today as we contemplate how AI will affect our futures. At the second link, find Bush's original essay for @TheAtlantic.

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#Tech #Technology #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #History @histodons #ComputerScience #InformationTechnology

The ConversationThe forgotten 80-year-old machine that shaped the internet – and could help us survive AI
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