A Review of ``As We May Think'' by Vannevar Bush

The document under review may be found here:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881

This document may be read, and its importance fully understood, within hours of errant reading.  The
author describes the issues in navigating human knowledge.  What should disappoint the reader is how
the present day has so miserably and pathetically fallen short of the described technology.  Some of
the ideas described are partially present, but obviously due purely to abundance of computing power.

He describes doing tasks with mechanical and analog devices one would typically nowadays think of as
distinctly suited to computers.  It gives the article a similar tone to ``Farewell: ETAOIN SHRDLU''.

The scientist's forehead-mounted camera doesn't exist to my knowledge, sans specialized helmets; the
scientist has many nice cameras available to him, but perhaps none so dedicated to his purpose.  Any
recording glasses are only made for the benefit of the manufacturer, but incidentally of any wearer.
That trend of modern technology is only one-size-fits-all, and with increasingly less control of it.

The memex is a proposed desk viewer for all documents with which a man may interact.  It permits for
associations to be made between documents, contrasted with those indexing methods not suited to man.
The purely mechanical device described doesn't exist, and yet it would be more capable than a modern
computer if it did.  The only modern offerings are imitations of Xanadu, that inspired by the memex.

I don't dislike my library of books.  Books have advantages overlooked by those before, primarily of
resilience to damage and being trivially tamper-proof; machines aren't reliable enough to best book.
My books never lag behind input.  He writes of men connected to machines; what a horrifying thought.

He writes of men relieved from mechanical processes; that future has arrived in its most pathetic of
forms.  The copyright cretins are only some of the blame.  Men have romanticized for too long of the
smart or average man's use of technology, and too little of the fool's; technology is queer, in that
it amplifies the fools more than the men, as fools are amplified in creating damage men work around.
Fools outnumber men, and a single fool creating bad foundations can be felt for several generations.

 We may some day click off arguments on a machine with the same assurance that we now enter sales on
 a cash register.
.