As We May Think

The "memex" is truly an intriguing theory. Bush had a good grasp on the way the human brain relates to information. Finding a way to make storing and retrieving information actually useful, was almost too large a step for the time. Even today having the internet, this hard-copy version seems a bit unrealistic. But, who would have thought our cell phones could play music, access our e-mail, and function as a normal cell phone? Not to mention that a large percentage of people have their own personal phone and computer.
There are some definite similarities in functions between the internet of today and the hypothetical memex. Bush came up with methods of scrolling, bookmarking, tagging, and just generic searching, making all the information supremely accessible. He even had short-cut keys.
The idea that one could place all their own personal information on their memex is probably the largest difference. The internet is definitely a place where people can put information out for everybody else, but namely it is a place to access information that someone else has posted. The memex seemed more of a way to store ones' own ideas rather than view someone else's. The general population today, probably knows some basic things about putting information on the web, but the majority just use the search for the things they need on servers like Google.
It would be interesting to see where the internet world would have ended up if the memex had existed. Would we have the internet at all? Would we just have more elaborate versions of the memex? Would the internet be more available to the general population of people, being able to put up information merely by scanning it in?
Who knows...?

Unknown

Technology and Art
Two sisters ever changing
Ever growing
Though very different origins
The two are alike
Feeding off each other
Utilizing each other
Becoming each other
They represent sides of humanity
A black and a white
An expression
A language
A tool
A method of changing the world