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Some History
The idea of the World Wide Web (WWW) is conventionally traced back to an article written by
Vannevar Bush, Director
of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, entitled
"As We May Think",
that was published in the July, 1945 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Bush conceived of a memory aid that would record traces of
an individual's researches and thought paths, the memex.
Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and to coin one at random, 'memex' will do.A memex is a device
in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is
mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged
intimate supplement to his memory.
Bush modelled his hypothetical system on his understanding of the associative nature of human
thought processes. His notion was that an individual could create a permanent record of
trails through a vast information database, in order to refer to them later and allow others
access to them. The WWW is a modern instantiation of Bush's Gedanken experiment. We are
surprizingly close to realizing many aspects of the memex, with the added advantage that
it is simpler to make private trails public knowledge.
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