Hola Bienvenido al site de Greb, soy fan de hypothesis y he decidido que los comentarios en esta version web y los secretos estarán en forma de anotaciones esto permite mantener las cosas organizadas.

Hello and welcome, feel free to leave comments here on the Hyphotesis annotations for this page I'm a big fan and I think that having this extra layer of annotations enriches the process.

Sería bueno generar este arte para tenerlo listo

Falta ortográfica

Yo juraba que era tio tuyo

Mi querido esposo, casado con el riesgo y el drama de sus historias ,

nada como el riesgo y drama de estar contigo

Coincidencialmente se hacer esto con una baraja y unos cuantos trucos

Un juego de cartas marca Bicycle pudiera ser interesante

Submarino CG en mar picado

Please explain to me how it is not evident to programmers that this is how we program.. we cannot hold more than seven items at a time. We cannot fracture. As Miller mentioned, 2 3 digit numbers are outside t capacity, but if you multiply them by paper w, if we free your memory, we can let the brain focus on the v

If you assign the memory function to a diagram, you can let your brain concentrate on the manipulation function.

Once we codify, we no longer have to keep the information in memory, for example : This hurts my brain

There are five roads in Brown County. One runs from Abbeville to Brownsville by way of Clinton. One runs from Clinton to Derbyshire by way of Fremont. One runs from Fremont to Brownsville by way of Abbieville. That's all the roads in Brown County, and all the roads in and out of those towns.

Which towns have roads connecting them directly to three other towns? Which towns have roads connecting them directly to only two other towns? How many towns must you pass through to get from Brownsville to Derbyshire?

But if we diagram it to a map, all of this makes sense.

"The learning of numbers and language must be subordinated ... Visual understanding is the essential and only valid means of teaching how to judge things correctly." ~ Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi

Pestalozzi was the guy who designed the educational system in which Einstein, the most extraordinary visualization of his time, was born q

There are a total of four development stages described in Piaget's theory: the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage.

You shouldn't probably teach

Symbolic manipulations aren't suitable for young kids. Geometry is better

Bruner says that when the kid is 6 years old you can trick the kid to learn symbolic thinking

Sutherland's thesis discusses the complexities of programming, particularly with data structures like rings and the challenges of manipulating them. He also talks about the organization of elements in a drawing system, like Sketchpad, into types for easier manipulation and generalization.

Let's break down some of these concepts:

1. Ring Structures: A ring is a data structure where each element points to the next, forming a loop. This can be visualized as a circular linked list. In Python, we don't have a built-in ring structure, but we can simulate one using lists:

```python ring = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] # This is our ring structure current_index = 0 # We start at the first element

To go to the next element:

current_index = (current_index + 1) % len(ring) # This will loop back to the start when we reach the end ```

1. Relative Addressing: This is a way of specifying a location in memory relative to another location. In Python, we use indexing to access elements relative to the start of a list:

```python list = [10, 20, 30, 40, 50]

To access the third element:

third_element = list[2] # Python uses 0-based indexing, so index 2 is the third element ```

1. Generic Structure, Hierarchies: Sutherland talks about organizing elements into types, which can be thought of as classes in Python. Each class can have specific methods for its type, and a general method can call these specific methods when needed:

```python class Circle: def display(self): print("Displaying a circle")

class Square: def display(self): print("Displaying a square")

The general function

def display_shape(shape): shape.display() # This will call the appropriate method depending on the type of shape

circle = Circle() square = Square()

display_shape(circle) # Prints "Displaying a circle" display_shape(square) # Prints "Displaying a square" ```

This way, the general function doesn't need to know the specifics of each shape, it just needs to know that each shape has a display method. This is an example of polymorphism in object-oriented programming.

In simpler terms, Sutherland's thesis is discussing the basic operations of a data structure known as a ring. A ring is a type of list where the elements are connected in a circular manner. The operations he mentions are:

1. Inserting a new element into the ring at a specified location.
2. Removing an element from the ring.
3. Moving all elements of one ring, in order, into another ring at a specified location.
4. Performing an operation on each member of a ring in either forward or reverse order.

These operations are implemented using macro instructions in the compiler language. A macro instruction is a directive to the compiler which specifies how an input pattern should be mapped to an output pattern.

The thesis also discusses the generation of new elements. Subroutines are used to set up new elements in free spaces in the storage structure. When parts of the drawing are deleted, the registers representing them become free and are placed in a 'FREES' ring. New components are set up at the end of the storage area, while free blocks are allowed to accumulate. A process called 'garbage collection' periodically compacts the storage structure by removing the free blocks and relocating the information above them.

In Python, the ring data structure can be implemented using a doubly linked list. Here's a simple example:

```python class Node: def init(self, data): self.data = data self.next = None self.prev = None

class Ring: def init(self): self.head = None

def append(self, data):
    if not self.head:
        self.head = Node(data)
        self.head.next = self.head
        self.head.prev = self.head
    else:
        new_node = Node(data)
        new_node.prev = self.head.prev
        new_node.next = self.head
        self.head.prev.next = new_node
        self.head.prev = new_node

def display(self):
    temp = self.head
    while True:
        print(temp.data, end = " ")
        temp = temp.next
        if temp == self.head:
            break

```

In this example, the Node class represents an element in the ring, and the Ring class represents the ring itself. The append method is used to add a new element to the ring, and the display method is used to print all elements in the ring.

In Sutherland's thesis, he discusses the concept of ring structures, which can be thought of as a type of data structure where elements are connected in a circular manner. This can be compared to a Python list where the last element points back to the first one, forming a "ring".

In the context of his thesis, Sutherland uses the terms "hen" and "chicken" to represent elements in this ring structure. A "hen" can be thought of as the starting point or the head of the list, while a "chicken" represents other elements in the list.

The operations he describes - inserting a new chicken into a ring at a specific location, removing a chicken from a ring, putting all the chickens of one ring into another at a specific location, and performing some auxiliary operation on each member of a ring in either forward or reverse order - can be compared to operations on a Python list.

For example, inserting a new chicken into a ring can be compared to inserting an element into a Python list at a specific index:

```python

Python list

ring = ['hen', 'chicken1', 'chicken2']

Insert new chicken at index 1

ring.insert(1, 'new_chicken') ```

Removing a chicken from a ring can be compared to removing an element from a Python list:

```python

Remove 'chicken1' from the list

ring.remove('chicken1') ```

Putting all the chickens of one ring into another at a specific location can be compared to extending a Python list with another list:

```python

Another ring

another_ring = ['hen2', 'chicken3', 'chicken4']

Extend ring with another_ring

ring.extend(another_ring) ```

Performing some auxiliary operation on each member of a ring in either forward or reverse order can be compared to iterating over a Python list in forward or reverse order:

```python

Forward order

for chicken in ring: print(chicken)

Reverse order

for chicken in reversed(ring): print(chicken) ```

The concept of "MACRO instructions" he mentions can be compared to Python functions that encapsulate these operations for easy use.

A list

Ivan writes about a concept called "Ring Structure". This is a way of organizing and linking different elements or components in a system.

In simpler terms, imagine you have a bunch of different objects (like points and lines in a drawing program like Sketchpad). You want to keep track of how these objects are related to each other. For example, you might want to know all the lines that end at a particular point.

To do this, Ivan uses a "ring structure". Each object has a "string of pointers" - basically a list of references to other objects. This list is circular - the last item in the list points back to the first item. This makes it easy to move forwards and backwards through the list.

Each object has two "registers" or slots for keeping track of these relationships. One slot is for the object itself, and the other is for the list of related objects.

Ivan uses the terms "hen" and "chicken" to describe these slots. The "hen" is the object itself, and the "chicken" is the list of related objects.

Here's a simple Python code example to illustrate this concept:

```python class Point: def init(self): self.hen = self self.chickens = []

class Line: def init(self, point1, point2): self.hen = self self.chickens = [point1, point2] point1.chickens.append(self) point2.chickens.append(self) ```

In this example, a Point object has a hen that refers to itself and a list of chickens that will contain any Line objects that end at this point. When a Line is created, it adds itself to the chickens list of its end points.

The "ring structure" is a way to organize and link different elements in a system, making it easier to find and update related elements.

The text is discussing a concept in computer programming called "reverse indexing".

In simple terms, reverse indexing is a way to access data in a list or array by starting from the end, rather than the beginning. In Python, you can use negative numbers to do reverse indexing. For example, if you have a list of numbers:

python numbers = [10, 20, 30, 40, 50]

You can access the last item in the list (50) by using -1 as the index:

python print(numbers[-1]) # Outputs: 50

The text also talks about "index registers". These are special places in a computer's memory where it can quickly store and retrieve data. In the context of the text, the index registers are being used to keep track of positions in a list or array.

The text also mentions "accumulator". In computer science, an accumulator is a register where intermediate arithmetic and logic results are stored.

The text also talks about "pointers". In simple terms, a pointer is a variable that stores the memory address of another variable. In Python, everything is an object and every variable holds the reference to the object (the address in memory), so you can say Python has pointers.

The text also mentions "instructions". In the context of computer programming, an instruction is a command given to the computer to perform a specific operation.

Mnemonics for Registers: Instead of remembering numerical indices, we use human-readable keys.

python point = {'TYPE': 'Point', 'PVAL_X': 5, 'PVAL_Y': 10}

Flexibility: If we want to change the internal structure, we can easily do so by changing the keys.

```python

Changing 'PVAL_X' to 'X_COORD'

point = {'TYPE': 'Point', 'X_COORD': 5, 'PVAL_Y': 10} ```

Conventions:

• The first component ('TYPE') indicates the type of element.
• Numerical information like coordinates is stored at the end.

python line = {'TYPE': 'Line', 'START': 'point1', 'END': 'point2', 'LENGTH': 7.2}

Pointers and Topology: We can use pointers (references) to other elements to establish relationships.

python point1 = {'TYPE': 'Point', 'PVAL_X': 1, 'PVAL_Y': 1} point2 = {'TYPE': 'Point', 'PVAL_X': 4, 'PVAL_Y': 5} line = {'TYPE': 'Line', 'START': point1, 'END': point2}

Relocation: If we move point1 to a new variable, we update the pointer in line.

python new_point1 = point1 # Relocating point1 to new_point1 line['START'] = new_point1 # Updating the pointer

Segregation of Data: Numerical data is at the end, so if we need to move elements, the numerical data remains untouched.

```python

Even if we relocate, the numerical data ('PVAL_X' and 'PVAL_Y') remains the same.

```

mne•mon•ic | na'mänik | noun a device such as a pattern of letters, ideas, or associations that assists in remembering something, for example Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain for the colors of the spectrum (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet): / had to invent a mnemonic, in other words a prompt, that I could use in chemistry exams. adjective aiding or designed to aid the memory: in terms of leadership, l use the mnemonic device OATE: ownership, accountability, transparency, and empowerment. • relating to the power of memory.

look into this dont understand

The most important Contribution of the Sketchpatd System

1. Copying Definitions
2. Recursive Merging

This is a year in

Everything is a feature

NOTE: the original version can be found here

This confused me but makes sense because you're essentially branching off the main template so no more updates that's fine

I ended up finding this book, and I've been going through it. It's an interesting concept to explore. It requires a leap to not want to understand a definition by western means, but rather feel the concept of what it is. This is very high-level thinking for the time, and I'm surprised there's so little on this.

Intuitive thinking from the point of view of philosophy and the emotional side has obscured a section of scientific thinking, which should be considered connected to our subconscious. This is the big distinction that he wants to say, "Hey, we can solve science with the subconscious, but we need to redefine our notion of where knowledge comes from." 🧠💡

important not to push or obsessions to others.

intuitive thinking as with Aristoteles brings discovery because basing upon nothing and bringing things to light is a part of this process

Very greb, I'm like this

I can see him struggling with this concept at this point I dont think we had greb the concept of arts as not something you do but a part of expressing what you have to say

There are many techinical people that are into arts and we think of that as an oddity but art is technology

```python def possibility(): # A possibility may or may not be may_be = True may_not_be = False return may_be, may_not_be

def meaning(): # A meaning is its possibility return possibility() ```

In this idea, possibility() returns two states: may_be and may_not_be, representing the existence and non-existence of a possibility. The meaning() function returns the same states, indicating that a meaning is its possibility.

It doesn't claim that science can explain everything, but rather, it uses science to explore and understand our understanding of the world. The surprising part is that the science it uses is the same science we use daily, so nothing new needs to be learned or old knowledge discarded.

One example of a surprising discovery made through Plex is that, contrary to Stephen Hawking's theory, there was no beginning to time and space. This contradicts the popular "big bang" theory, which suggests there was an initial moment when time and space began. According to Plex, this idea of a "big bang" is just a result of how our current science views the nature of the universe.

Plex also differs from other scientific approaches in that it doesn't rely on axioms, which are assumptions made without proof. Instead, Plex only uses definitions, meaning it only accepts as true what can be clearly defined and understood.

We're saying let's consider the concept of a "big bang". In traditional science, we might assume the existence of a "big bang" like this:

instead of thinking big_bang = True

But in Plex, we would only accept the "big bang" if we can define it:

python def big_bang(): # Define what a "big bang" is # If we can't define it, then it doesn't exist in Plex pass

Let's not assume reality but rather just try to define the elements we need to use

I think that Plex is scientific philosophy that aims to understand our understanding of nature, rather than nature itself. It emphasizes that our understanding of nature determines our role in the scheme of things.

In simpler terms, Plex is about how we perceive and interact with the world around us. It's not about the actual nature of things, but about how we understand and interpret them.

For example, if a being could only perceive magnetic fields, then anything non-magnetic would be invisible or non-existent to it. That's its understanding of nature, and it would behave accordingly.

The text also mentions that Plex doesn't have axioms, which are fundamental truths or principles that are accepted without proof. Instead, it only has definitions. This means that Plex doesn't assume anything to be true without defining it first.

The author also challenges the concept of a "big bang" or a beginning of time, stating that this idea is an artifact of our current scientific understanding, and that Plex offers proofs that there was no beginning.

Here's a Python analogy to help understand this concept:

```python class Being: def init(self, understanding): self.understanding = understanding

def perceive(self, nature):
    return self.understanding(nature)

def magnetic_understanding(nature): return 'magnetic' in nature

def non_magnetic_understanding(nature): return 'non-magnetic' in nature

magnetic_being = Being(magnetic_understanding) non_magnetic_being = Being(non_magnetic_understanding)

nature = ['magnetic', 'non-magnetic']

print(magnetic_being.perceive(nature)) # True print(non_magnetic_being.perceive(nature)) # True ```

In this example, Being represents a being in Plex. Each being has an understanding of nature, which is a function that takes nature as input and returns a perception. The magnetic_understanding and non_magnetic_understanding functions represent different ways of understanding nature. When a being perceives nature, it uses its understanding to interpret it. The magnetic being can perceive magnetic things in nature, while the non-magnetic being can perceive non-magnetic things.

Interesting concepts

💆‍♂️

previous work

Look into

The decision to actually implement a drawing system reflected our belief that knowledge of the facilities, which would be useful, could only be attained by actually testing them. The decision to implement a drawing system did not imply however, that brute force techniques were to be employed to computerize ordinary drafting tools.

In other words if it is easy to change , modify customize the system then users will indeed modify it and make it uniquely theirs.

This section is vital for assessing the capabilities of the remember or the system and knowing what your tools can do.

I think this fits with Ray Dalios definition of baseball card management.

Really interesting concept explicit-human and explicit-artiact

Running this on

emulator

This is such an important concept we need to rescue

9:35 really good natural language support

in 8:40, links are used in images to show dynamic threads. I can see this linking for information and expanding on the search of elements

Cards have informations and interactions

Bill Atkinson had an idea about the freedom to associate knowledge not by what comes next on the list but by the links that are associated with it. This means that information can be organized in a non-linear fashion, allowing for connections to be made between seemingly unrelated ideas. By expanding on this idea, we can create new and innovative ways of storing and accessing information, potentially leading to breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence and data analysis.

Great examples at minute 3:30 for a car system coded in hypertext

Software erector set that lets nonprogrammers create interactive information

Hypercard 1992

An introduction to Apple's Hypercard. Guests include Apple Fellow and Hypercard creator Bill Atkinson, Hypercard senior engineer Dan Winkler, author of "The Complete Hypercard Handbook" Danny Goodman, and Robert Stein, Publisher of Voyager Company. Demonstrations include Hypercard 1.0, Complete Car Cost Guide, Focal Point, Laserstacks, and National Galllery of Art. Originally broadcast in 1987. Copyright 1987 Stewart Cheifet Productions.

User Manual

https://doctors.practo.com/the-hippocratic-oath-the-original-and-revised-version/

"I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant: I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow. I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism. I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug. I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery. I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God. I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick. I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure. I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm. If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help."

Poker chip example really well explained at the Reality Distortion Kit at the stanford lecture

Thinking, Fast and Slow - amazon.com Wikipedia

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman | Goodreads

https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/2908/Engineering-a-Safer-WorldSystems-Thinking-Applied

https://www.amazon.com/Engineering-Safer-World-Systems-Thinking/dp/0262533693

https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/2908/Engineering-a-Safer-WorldSystems-Thinking-Applied

as seen in

For anyone interested in this I would also recommend anything regarding etoys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prIwpKL57dMhttp://www.squeakland.org/

Drawing with right side of the brain

Example of the tables

Annotated

Great distinction

How did we go from this to ... Kids fundamentally not having a playground.

More infomation on the FLEX Machine I like the layout of this paper a lot.

Fascinating how Even though we did realized some of this with the mobile phone we still have a system that's so fragmented that it's fundamentally getting in the way of progress

Great resources here

Link to Ivan Sutherlands demo

GOTO

Interesting need to look at this , It would be a good execercise.

The understatement of a lifetime

this is important for offline

I like this concept of persistence of your desk.

Es importante sacar el tiempo de reunirnos con ellos

Nazario , esto fue interesante para no confundir inteligencia artificial con LLM, estoy escribiendo esto porque es muy importante que no se se utilice el termino de manera intercambiable

I'm so guilty of this.

I love this!

True, even doing simple things like making it easier to choose which data you want to share would be a step in the right direction.

This would be a killer introduction to computing I wonder if there's a demo of this anywhere

Once in a while we do find gold in the Onion  

it's 2023 and I don't see anyone planning for this massive job displacement, I think that the hollywood strikes are a sign of things to come

This would be enough of a selling point by itself: how does the world look when staff costs are no longer an entry barrier?

So, Essentially, they're proposing we take populous countries and limit the automation and let it go wild, but wouldn't this mean that over time, there would be technology segregation or a widespread between the automated countries and the manual labor ones? This would potentially create a crisis. We can likely say that opening borders because of not having to be in the physical location could open up some other doors.

esto significa que el internet no es una sola tecnologia sino un grupo

IMPORTANT

If you're here annotating it means you care about this document there's a project sponsored by the Institute that has historically annotated this document

Annotated version

I'd encourage everyone to follow this version

The link was broken this one seams to work Scan of the Original Report

People like me that have learned about this way for thinking and the challenge that is finding alike minds that want to explore and build this for the next generation. Sometimes the difference between a blue thought and a revolution is having who to talk to about it. How can we connect people working on the same problem how do you put in the same metaphorical room the people trying to push the envolope

Right, so the modern equivalent would be to design a game or an 3d animation in an intuitive way, yet the integration of pipeline in this systems makes it so that not even experienced professionals in the area cn develop a short film or an interactive experience through art that eases people into coding.

I think we need to do a better job at this. If the system that allowed us to design the processes also taught it to people then we wouldn't have to chose between improving the learning curve and the system there should all be one. why did we stop shipping manuals with our tech..? ahh it was because we stopped caring about what the people that designed the tool thought.

The simple idea that new systems are harder than old even if they're better because they are new and people have to put more effort into using them.

What I feel it's really important is the idea that the measure of a good system isn't only how easy it is to learn, if we only evaluate systems by their learning curve we'll be face with only being able to advance society at the speed of the slower adopter. Therefore we need to * Segment and dream about the future * Be mindful of the gap between where we are and where the vision is pushing towards since there has to be a common point that collectively moves us forwards

Not to mention highly inefficient , slow and unresponsive. The biggest thing that we've settled to see this as normal and consider a 10% speed increase as an innovation , think of what would happened if we had a better protocol for sharing information that followed the original design.

I'm particularly concerned with the adoption curve of technology when we disregard optimization it serves indirectly as a way to discriminate against people that can't afford the fastest connection the latest hardware. I wonder if we're at the point with AI assisted coding that we can optimize these systems and the cost of doing so would justify "doing it properly" , yet if we don't know about this principles we're completely on the blind.

Love it when institutions facilitate access to fwnoledge...

link to the info

Ohh I also found this modern link to the link to their readings with this info less pretty but all here History of computers 34q readings

elevate the effectiveness of human problem solvers

Further efforts are underway to establish man-computer collaboration, especially in fields like artificial intelligence and heuristic programming. Here, problem-solving processes and methods have been developed for entirely man-made systems. Yet, the author argues that none of these efforts have introduced as fundamental an approach as the one proposed in their program.

As We May Think

From The Atlantic Monthly, July 1945: 101-108. Reprinted with permission. (c)1945, V. Bush.

As Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Dr. Vannevar Bush has coördinated the activities of some six thousand leading American scientists in the application of science to warfare. In this significant article he holds up an incentive for scientists when the fighting has ceased. He urges that men of science should then turn to the massive task of making more accessible our bewildering store of knowledge. For many years inventions have extended man's physical powers rather than the powers of his mind. Trip hammers that multiply the fists, microscopes that sharpen the eye, and engines of destruction and detection are new results, but the end results, of modern science. Now, says Dr. Bush, instruments are at hand which, if properly developed, will give man access to and command over the inherited knowledge of the ages. The perfection of these pacific instruments should be the first objective of our scientists as they emerge from their war work. Like Emerson's famous address of 1837 on "The American Scholar," this paper by Dr. Bush calls for a new relationship between thinking man and the sum of our knowledge. - The Editor

This has not been a scientist's war; it has been a war in which all have had a part. The scientists, burying their old professional competition in the demand of a common cause, have shared greatly and learned much. It has been exhilarating to work in effective partnership. Now, for many, this appears to be approaching an end. What are the scientists to do next?

For the biologists, and particularly for the medical scientists, there can be little indecision, for their war work has hardly required them to leave the old paths. Many indeed have been able to carry on their war research in their familiar peacetime laboratories. Their objectives remain much the same.

It is the physicists who have been thrown most violently off stride, who have left academic pursuits for the making of strange destructive gadgets, who have had to devise new methods for their unanticipated assignments. They have done their part on the devices that made it possible to turn back the enemy. They have worked in combined effort with the physicists of our allies. They have felt within themselves the stir of achievement. They have been part of a great team. Now, as peace approaches, one asks where they will find objectives worthy of their best.

I

Of what lasting benefit has been man's use of science and of the new instruments which his research brought into existence? First, they have increased his control of his material environment. They have improved his food, his clothing, his shelter; they have increased his security and released him partly from the bondage of bare existence. They have given him increased knowledge of his own biological processes so that he has had a progressive freedom from disease and an increased span of life. They are illuminating the interactions of his physiological and psychological functions, giving the promise of an improved mental health.

Science has provided the swiftest communication between individuals; it has provided a record of ideas and has enabled man to manipulate and to make extracts from that record so that knowledge evolves and endures throughout the life of a race rather than that of an individual.

There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. 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. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial.

Professionally our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purpose. If the aggregate time spent in writing scholarly works and in reading them could be evaluated, the ratio between these amounts of time might well be startling. Those who conscientiously attempt to keep abreast of current thought, even in restricted fields, by close and continuous reading might well shy away from an examination calculated to show how much of the previous month's efforts could be produced on call. Mendel's concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; and this sort of catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated all about us, as truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential.

The difficulty seems to be, not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present-day interests, but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record. The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships.

But there are signs of a change as new and powerful instrumentalities come into use. Photocells capable of seeing things in a physical sense, advanced photography which can record what is seen or even what is not, thermionic tubes capable of controlling potent forces under the guidance of less power than a mosquito uses to vibrate his wings, cathode ray tubes rendering visible an occurrence so brief that by comparison a microsecond is a long time, relay combinations which will carry out involved sequences of movements more reliably than any human operator and thousands of times as fast-- there are plenty of mechanical aids with which to effect a transformation in scientific records.

Two centuries ago Leibnitz invented a calculating machine which embodied most of the essential features of recent keyboard devices, but it could not then come into use. The economics of the situation were against it: the labor involved in constructing it, before the days of mass production, exceeded the labor to be saved by its use, since all it could accomplish could be duplicated by sufficient use of pencil and paper. Moreover, it would have been subject to frequent breakdown, so that it could not have been depended upon; for at that time and long after, complexity and unreliability were synonymous.

Babbage, even with remarkably generous support for his time, could not produce his great arithmetical machine. His idea was sound enough, but construction and maintenance costs were then too heavy. Had a Pharaoh been given detailed and explicit designs of an automobile, and had he understood them completely, it would have taxed the resources of his kingdom to have fashioned the thousands of parts for a single car, and that car would have broken down on the first trip to Giza.

Machines with interchangeable parts can now be constructed with great economy of effort. In spite of much complexity, they perform reliably. Witness the humble typewriter, or the movie camera, or the automobile. Electrical contacts have ceased to stick when thoroughly understood. Note the automatic telephone exchange, which has hundreds of thousands of such contacts, and yet is reliable. A spider web of metal, sealed in a thin glass container, a wire heated to brilliant glow, in short, the thermionic tube of radio sets, is made by the hundred million, tossed about in packages, plugged into sockets--and it works! Its gossamer parts, the precise location and alignment involved in its construction, would have occupied a master craftsman of the guild for months; now it is built for thirty cents. The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.

II

A record, if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted. Today we make the record conventionally by writing and photography, followed by printing; but we also record on film, on wax disks, and on magnetic wires. Even if utterly new recording procedures do not appear, these present ones are certainly in the process of modification and extension.

Certainly progress in photography is not going to stop. Faster material and lenses, more automatic cameras, finer-grained sensitive compounds to allow an extension of the minicamera idea, are all imminent. Let us project this trend ahead to a logical, if not inevitable, outcome. The camera hound of the future wears on his forehead a lump a little larger than a walnut. It takes pictures 3 millimeters square, later to be projected or enlarged, which after all involves only a factor of 10 beyond present practice. The lens is of universal focus, down to any distance accommodated by the unaided eye, simply because it is of short focal length. There is a built-in photocell on the walnut such as we now have on at least one camera, which automatically adjusts exposure for a wide range of illumination. There is film in the walnut for a hundred exposure, and the spring for operating its shutter and shifting its film is wound once for all when the film clip is inserted. It produces its result in full color. It may well be stereoscopic, and record with spaced glass eyes, for striking improvements in stereoscopic technique are just around the corner.

The cord which trips its shutter may reach down a man's sleeve within easy reach of his fingers. A quick squeeze, and the picture is taken. On a pair of ordinary glasses is a square of fine lines near the top of one lens, where it is out of the way of ordinary vision. When an object appears in that square, it is lined up for its j picture. As the scientist of the future moves about the laboratory or the field, every time he looks at something worthy of the record, he trips the shutter and in it goes, without even an audible click. Is this all fantastic? The only fantastic thing about it is the idea of making as many pictures as would result from its use.

Will there be dry photography? It is already here in two forms. When Brady made his Civil War pictures, the plate had to be wet at the time of exposure. Now it has to be wet during development instead. In the future perhaps it need not be wetted at all. There have long been films impregnated with diazo dyes which form a picture without development, so that it is already there as soon as the camera has been operated. An exposure to ammonia gas destroys the unexposed dye, and the picture can then be taken out into the light and examined. The process is now slow, but someone may speed it up, and it has no grain difficulties such as now keep photographic researchers busy. Often it would be advantageous to be able to snap the camera and to look at the picture immediately.

Another process now in use is also slow, and more or less clumsy. For fifty years impregnated papers have been used which turn dark at every point where an electrical contact touches them, by reason of the chemical change thus produced in an iodine compound included in the paper. They have been used to make records, for a pointer moving across them can leave a trail behind. If the electrical potential on the pointer is varied as it moves, the line becomes light or dark in accordance with the potential.

This scheme is now used in facsimile transmission. The pointer draws a set of closely spaced lines across the paper one after another. As it moves, its potential is varied in accordance with a varying current received over wires from a distant station, where these variations are produced by a photocell which is similarly scanning a picture. At every instant the darkness of the line being drawn is made equal to the darkness of the point on the picture being observed by the photocell. Thus, when the whole picture has been covered, a replica appears at the receiving end.

A scene itself can be just as well looked over line by line by the photocell in this way as can a photograph of the scene. This whole apparatus constitutes a camera, with the added feature, which can be dispensed with if desired, of making its picture at a distance. It is slow, and the picture is poor in detail. Still, it does give another process of dry photography, in which the picture is finished as soon as it is taken.

It would be a brave man who would predict that such a process will always remain clumsy, slow, and faulty in detail. Television equipment today transmits sixteen reasonably good pictures a second, and it involves only two essential differences from the process described above. For one, the record is made by a moving beam of electrons rather than a moving pointer, for the reason that an electron beam can sweep across the picture very rapidly indeed. The other difference involves merely the use of a screen which glows momentarily when the electrons hit, rather than a chemically treated paper or film which is permanently altered. This speed is necessary in television, for motion pictures rather than stills are the object.

Use chemically treated film in place of the glowing screen, allow the apparatus to transmit one picture only rather than a succession, and a rapid camera for dry photography results. The treated film needs to be far faster in action than present examples, but it probably could be. More serious is the objection that this scheme would involve putting the film inside a vacuum chamber, for electron beams behave normally only in such a rarefied environment. This difficulty could be avoided by allowing the electron beam to play on one side of a partition, and by pressing the film against the other side, if this partition were such as to allow the electrons to go through perpendicular to its surface, and to prevent them from spreading out sideways. Such partitions, in crude form, could certainly be constructed, and they will hardly hold up the general development.

Like dry photography, microphotography still has a long way to go. The basic scheme of reducing the size of the record, and examining it by projection rather than directly, has possibilities too great to be ignored. The combination of optical projection and photographic reduction is already producing some results in microfilm for scholarly purposes, and the potentialities are highly suggestive. Today, with microfilm, reductions by a linear factor of 20 can be employed and still produce full clarity when the material is re-enlarged for examination. The limits are set by the graininess of the film, the excellence of the optical system, and the efficiency of the light sources employed. All of these are rapidly improving .

Assume a linear ratio of 100 for future use. Consider film of the same thickness as paper, although thinner film will certainly be usable. Even under these conditions there would be a total factor of 10,000 between the bulk of the ordinary record on books, and its microfilm replica. The Encyclopedia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk. If the human race has produced since the invention of movable type a total record, in the form of magazines, newspapers, books, tracts, advertising blurbs, correspondence, having a volume corresponding to a billion books, the whole affair, assembled and compressed, could be lugged off in a moving van. Mere compression, of course, is not enough; one needs not only to make and store a record but also be able to consult it, and this aspect of the matter comes later. Even the modern great library is not generally consulted; it is nibbled at by a few.

Compression is important, however, when it comes to costs. The material for the microfilm Britannica would cost a nickel, and it could be mailed anywhere for a cent. What would it cost to print a million copies? To print a sheet of newspaper, in a large edition, costs a small fraction of a cent. The entire material of the Britannica in reduced microfilm form would go on a sheet eight and one-half by eleven inches. Once it is available, with the photographic reproduction methods of the future, duplicates in large quantities could probably be turned out for a cent apiece beyond the cost of materials. The preparation of the original copy? That introduces the next aspect of the subject.

III

To make the record, we now push a pencil or tap a typewriter. Then comes the process of digestion and correction, followed by an intricate process of typesetting, printing, and distribution. To consider the first stage of the procedure, will the author of the future cease writing by hand or typewriter and talk directly to the record? He does so indirectly, by talking to a stenographer or a wax cylinder; but the elements are all present if he wishes to have his talk directly produce a typed record. All he needs to do is to take advantage of existing mechanisms and to alter his language .

At a recent World Fair a machine called a Voder was shown. A girl stroked its keys and it emitted recognizable speech. No human vocal chords entered into the procedure at any point; the keys simply combined some electrically produced vibrations and passed these on to a loudspeaker. In the Bell Laboratories there is the converse of this machine, called a Vocoder. The loud-speaker is replaced by a microphone, which picks up sound. Speak to it, and the corresponding keys move. This may be one element of the postulated system.

The other element is found in the stenotype, that somewhat disconcerting device encountered usually at public meetings. A girl strokes its keys languidly and looks about the room and sometimes at the speaker with a disquieting gaze. From it emerges a typed strip which records in a phonetically simplified language a record of what the speaker is supposed to have said. Later this strip is retyped into ordinary language, for in its nascent form it is intelligible only to the initiated. Combine these two elements, let the Vocoder run the stenotype, and the result is a machine which types when talked to.

Our present languages are not especially adapted to this sort of mechanization, it is true. It is strange that the inventors of universal languages have not seized upon the idea of producing one which better fitted the technique for transmitting and recording speech. Mechanization may yet force the issue, especially in the scientific field; whereupon scientific jargon would become still less intelligible to the layman.

One can now picture a future investigator in his laboratory. His hands are free, and he is not anchored. As he moves about and observes, he photographs and comments. Time is automatically recorded to tie the two records together. If he goes into the field, he may be connected by radio to his recorder. As he ponders over his notes in the evening, he again talks his comments into the record. His typed record, as well as his photographs, may both be in miniature, so that he projects them for examination.

Much needs to occur, however, between the collection of data and observations, the extraction of parallel material from the existing record, and the final insertion of new material into the general body of the common record. For mature thought there is no mechanical substitute. But creative thought and essentially repetitive thought are very different things. For the latter there are, and may be, powerful mechanical aids.

Adding a column of figures is a repetitive thought process, and it was long ago properly relegated to the machine. True, the machine is sometimes controlled by a keyboard, and thought of a sort enters in reading the figures and poking the corresponding keys, but even this is avoidable. Machines have been made which will read typed figures by photocells and then depress the corresponding keys; these are combinations of photocells for scanning the type, electric circuits for sorting the consequent variations, and relay circuits for interpreting the result into the action of solenoids to pull the keys down.

All this complication is needed because of the clumsy way in which we have learned to write figures. If we recorded them positionally, simply by the configuration of a set of dots on a card, the automatic reading mechanism would become comparatively simple. In fact, if the dots are holes, we have the punched-card machine long ago produced by Hollorith for the purposes of the census, and now used throughout business. Some types of complex businesses could hardly operate without these machines.

Adding is only one operation. To perform arithmetical computation involves also subtraction, multiplication, and division, and in addition some method for temporary storage of results, removal from storage for further manipulation, and recording of final results by printing. Machines for these purposes are now of two types: keyboard machines for accounting and the like, manually controlled for the insertion of data, and usually automatically controlled as far as the sequence of operations is concerned; and punched-card machines in which separate operations are usually delegated to a series of machines, and the cards then transferred bodily from one to another. Both forms are very useful; but as far as complex computations are concerned, both are still in embryo.

Rapid electrical counting appeared soon after the physicists found it desirable to count cosmic rays. For their own purposes the physicists promptly constructed thermionic-tube equipment capable of counting electrical impulses at the rate of 100,000 a second. The advanced arithmetical machines of the future will be electrical in nature, and they will perform at 100 times present speeds, or more.

Moreover, they will be far more versatile than present commercial machines, so that they may readily be adapted for a wide variety of operations. They will be controlled by a control card or film, they will select their own data and manipulate it in accordance with the instructions thus inserted, they will perform complex arithmetical computations at exceedingly high speeds, and they will record results in such form as to be readily available for distribution or for later further manipulation. Such machines will have enormous appetites. One of them will take instructions and data from a whole roomful of girls armed with simple keyboard punches, and will deliver sheets of computed results every few minutes. There will always be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things.

IV

The repetitive processes of thought are not confined, however, to matters of arithmetic and statistics. In fact, every time one combines and records facts in accordance with established logical processes, the creative aspect of thinking is concerned only with the selection of the data and the process to be employed, and the manipulation thereafter is repetitive in nature and hence a fit matter to be relegated to the machines. Not so much has been done along these lines, beyond the bounds of arithmetic, as might be done, primarily because of the economics of the situation. The needs of business, and the extensive market obviously waiting, assured the advent of mass-produced arithmetical machines just as soon as production methods were sufficiently advanced.

With machines for advanced analysis no such situation existed; for there was and is no extensive market; the users of advanced methods of manipulating data are a very small part of the population. There are, however, machines for solving differential equations--and functional and integral equations, for that matter. There are many special machines, such as the harmonic synthesizer which predicts the tides. There will be many more, appearing certainly first in the hands of the scientist and in small numbers.

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability. The abacus, with its beads strung on parallel wires, led the Arabs to positional numeration and the concept of zero many centuries before the rest of the world; and it was a useful tool--so useful that it still exists.

It is a far cry from the abacus to the modern keyboard accounting machine. It will be an equal step to the arithmetical machine of the future. But even this new machine will not take the scientist where he needs to go. Relief must be secured from laborious detailed manipulation of higher mathematics as well, if the users of it are to free their brains for something more than repetitive detailed transformations in accordance with established rules. A mathematician is not a man who can readily manipulate figures; often he cannot. He is not even a man who can readily perform the transformations of equations by the use of calculus. He is primarily an individual who is skilled in the use of symbolic logic on a high plane, and especially he is a man of intuitive judgment in the choice of the manipulative processes he employs.

All else he should be able to turn over to his mechanism, just as confidently as he turns over the propelling of his car to the intricate mechanism under the hood. Only then will mathematics be practically effective in bringing the growing knowledge of atomistics to the useful solution of the advanced problems of chemistry, metallurgy, and biology. For this reason there will come more machines to handle advanced mathematics for the scientist. Some of them will be sufficiently bizarre to suit the most fastidious connoisseur of the present artifacts of civilization.

V

The scientist, however, is not the only person who manipulates data and examines the world about him by the use of logical processes, although he sometimes preserves this appearance by adopting into the fold anyone who becomes logical, much in the manner in which a British labor leader is elevated to knighthood. Whenever logical processes of thought are employed--that is, whenever thought for a time runs along an accepted groove--there is an opportunity for the machine. Formal logic used to be a keen instrument in the hands of the teacher in his trying of students' souls. It is readily possible to construct a machine which will manipulate premises in accordance with formal logic, simply by the clever use of relay circuits. Put a set of premises into such a device and turn the crank, and it will readily pass out conclusion after conclusion, all in accordance with logical law, and with no more slips than would be expected of a keyboard adding machine.

Logic can become enormously difficult, and it would undoubtedly be well to produce more assurance in its use. The machines for higher analysis have usually been equation solvers. Ideas are beginning to appear for equation transformers, which will rearrange the relationship expressed by an equation in accordance with strict and rather advanced logic. Progress is inhibited by the exceedingly crude way in which mathematicians express their relationships. They employ a symbolism which grew like Topsy and has little consistency; a strange fact in that most logical field.

A new symbolism, probably positional, must apparently precede the reduction of mathematical transformations to machine processes. Then, on beyond the strict logic of the mathematician, lies the application of logic in everyday affairs. We may some day click off arguments on a machine with the same assurance that we now enter sales on a cash register. But the machine of logic will not look like a cash register, even of the streamlined model.

So much for the manipulation of ideas and their insertion into the record. Thus far we seem to be worse off than before--for we can enormously extend the record; yet even in its present bulk we can hardly consult it. This is a much larger matter than merely the extraction of data for the purposes of scientific research; it involves the entire process by which man profits by his inheritance of acquired knowledge. The prime action of use is selection, and here we are halting indeed. There may be millions of fine thoughts, and the account of the experience on which they are based, all encased within stone walls of acceptable architectural form; but if the scholar can get at only one a week by diligent search, his syntheses are not likely to keep up with the current scene.

Selection, in this broad sense, is a stone adze in the hands of a cabinetmaker. Yet, in a narrow sense and in other areas, something has already been done mechanically on selection. The personnel officer of a factory drops a stack of a few thousand employee cards into a selecting machine, sets a code in accordance with an established convention, and produces in a short time a list of all employees who live in Trenton and know Spanish. Even such devices are much too slow when it comes, for example, to matching a set of fingerprints with one of five million on file. Selection devices of this sort will soon be speeded up from their present rate of reviewing data at a few hundred a minute. By the use of photocells and microfilm they will survey items at the rate of a thousand a second, and will print out duplicates of those selected.

This process, however, is simple selection: it proceeds by examining in turn every one of a large set of items, and by picking out those which have certain specified characteristics. There is another form of selection best illustrated by the automatic telephone exchange. You dial a number and the machine selects and connects just one of a million possible stations. It does not run over them all. It pays attention only to a class given by a first digit, then only to a subclass of this given by the second digit, and so on; and thus proceeds rapidly and almost unerringly to the selected station. It requires a few seconds to make the selection, although the process could be speeded up if increased speed were economically warranted. If necessary, it could be made extremely fast by substituting thermionic-tube switching for mechanical switching, so that the full selection could be made in one one-hundredth of a second. No one would wish to spend the money necessary to make this change in the telephone system, but the general idea is applicable elsewhere.

Take the prosaic problem of the great department store. Every time a charge sale is made, there are a number of things to be done. The inventory needs to be revised, the salesman needs to be given credit for the sale, the general accounts need an entry, and, most important, the customer needs to be charged. A central records device has been developed in which much of this work is done conveniently. The salesman places on a stand the customer's identification card, his own card, and the card taken from the article sold--all punched cards. When he pulls a lever, contacts are made through the holes, machinery at a central point makes the necessary computations and entries, and the proper receipt is printed for the salesman to pass to the customer.

But there may be ten thousand charge customers doing business with the store, and before the full operation can be completed someone has to select the right card and insert it at the central office. Now rapid selection can slide just the proper card into position in an instant or two, and return it afterward. Another difficulty occurs, however. Someone must read a total on the card, so that the machine can add its computed item to it. Conceivably the cards might be of the dry photography type I have described. Existing totals could then be read by photocell, and the new total entered by an electron beam.

The cards may be in miniature, so that they occupy little space. They must move quickly. They need not be transferred far, but merely into position so that the photocell and recorder can operate on them. Positional dots can enter the data. At the end of the month a machine can readily be made to read these and to print an ordinary bill. With tube selection, in which no mechanical parts are involved in the switches, little time need be occupied in bringing the correct card into use--a second should suffice for the entire operation. The whole record on the card may be made by magnetic dots on a steel sheet if desired, instead of dots to be observed optically, following the scheme by which Poulsen long ago put speech on a magnetic wire. This method has the advantage of simplicity and ease of erasure. By using photography, however, one can arrange to project the record in enlarged form, and at a distance by using the process common in television equipment.

One can consider rapid selection of this form, and distant projection for other purposes. To be able to key one sheet of a million before an operator in a second or two, with the possibility of then adding notes thereto, is suggestive in many ways. It might even be of use in libraries, but that is another story. At any rate, there are now some interesting combinations possible. One might, for example, speak to a microphone, in the manner described in connection with the speech-controlled typewriter, and thus make his selections. It would certainly beat the usual file clerk.

VI

The real heart of the matter of selection, however, goes deeper than a lag in the adoption of mechanisms by libraries, or a lack of development of devices for their use. Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing. When data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. It can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having found one item, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path.

The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature.

Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental process artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it. In minor ways he may even improve, for his records have relative permanency. The first idea, however, to be drawn from the analogy concerns selection. Selection by association, rather than by indexing, may yet be mechanized. One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which the mind follows an associative trail, but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage.

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.

It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.

In one end is the stored material. The matter of bulk is well taken care of by improved microfilm. Only a small part of the interior of the memex is devoted to storage, the rest to mechanism. Yet if the user inserted 5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill the repository, so he can be profligate and enter material freely.

Most of the memex contents are purchased on microfilm ready for insertion. Books of all sorts, pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus obtained and dropped into place. Business correspondence takes the same path. And there is provision for direct entry. On the top of the memex is a transparent platen. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, all sorts of things. When one is in place, the depression of a lever causes it to be photographed onto the next blank space in a section ~_ the memex film, dry photography being employed

There is, of course, provision for consultation of the record by the usual scheme of indexing. If the user wishes to consult a certain book, he taps its code on the keyboard, and the title page of the book promptly appears before him, projected onto one of his viewing positions. Frequently-used codes are mnemonic, so that he seldom consults his code book; but when he does, a single tap of a key projects it for his use. Moreover, he has supplemental levers. On deflecting one of these levers to the right he runs through the book before him, each page in turn being projected at a speed which just allows a recognizing glance at each. If he deflects it further to the right, he steps through the book 10 pages at a time; still further at 100 pages at a time. Deflection to the left gives him the same control backwards.

A special button transfers him immediately to the first page of the index. Any given book of his library can thus be called up and consulted with far greater facility than if it were taken from a shelf. As he has several projection positions, he can leave one item in position while he calls up another. He can add marginal notes and comments, taking advantage of one possible type of dry photography, and it could even be arranged so that he can do this by a stylus scheme, such as is now employed in the telautograph seen in railroad waiting rooms, just as though he had the physical page before him.

VII

All this is conventional, except for the projection forward of present-day mechanisms and gadgetry. It affords an immediate step, however, to associative indexing, the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another. This is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing.

When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it ~out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. At the bottom of each there are a number of blank code spaces, and a pointer is set to indicate one of these on each item. The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined. In each code space appears the code word. Out of view, but also in the code space, is inserted a set of dots for photocell viewing; and on each item these dots by their positions designate the index number of the other item.

Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space. Moreover, when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn, rapidly or slowly, by deflecting a lever like that used for turning the pages of a book. It is exactly as though the physical items had been gathered together from widely separated sources and bound together to form a new book. It is more than this, for any item can be joined into numerous trails.

The owner of the memex, let us say, is interested in the origin and properties of the bow and arrow. Specifically he is studying why the short Turkish bow was apparently superior to the English long bow in the skirmishes of the Crusades. He has dozens of possibly pertinent books and articles in his memex. First he runs through an encyclopedia, finds an interesting but sketchy article, leaves it projected. Next, in a history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the two together. Thus he goes, building a trail of many items. Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either linking it into the main trail or joining it by a side trail to a particular item. When it becomes evident that the elastic properties of available materials had a great deal to do with the bow, he branches off on a side trail which takes him through textbooks on elasticity and tables of physical constants. He inserts a page of longhand analysis of his own. Thus he builds a trail of his interest through the maze of materials available to him.

And his trails do not fade. Several years later, his talk with a friend turns to the queer ways in which a people resist innovations, even of vital interest. He has an example, in the fact that the outraged Europeans still failed to adopt the Turkish bow. In fact he has a trail on it. A touch brings up the code book. Tapping a few keys projects the head of the trail. A lever runs through it at will, stopping at interesting items, going off on side excursions. It is an interesting trail, pertinent to the discussion. So he sets a reproducer in action, photographs the whole trail out, and passes it to his friend for insertion in his own memex, there to be linked into the more general trail.

VIII

Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready-made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities. The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client's interest. The physician, puzzled by a patient's reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. The chemist, struggling with the synthesis of an organic compound, has all the chemical literature before him in his laboratory, with trails following the analogies of compounds, and side trails to their physical and chemical behavior.

The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only on the salient items, and can follow at any time contemporary trails which lead him all over civilization at a particular epoch. There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world's record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected.

Thus science may implement the ways in which man produces, stores, and consults the record of the race. It might be striking to outline the instrumentalities of the future more spectacularly, rather than to stick closely to methods and elements now known and undergoing rapid development, as has been done here. Technical difficulties of all sorts have been ignored, certainly, but also ignored are means as yet unknown which may come any day to accelerate technical progress as violently as did the advent of the thermionic tube. In order that the picture may not be too commonplace, by reason of sticking to present-day patterns, it may be well to mention one such possibility, not to prophesy but merely to suggest, for prophecy based on extension of the known has substance, while prophecy founded on the unknown is only a doubly involved guess.

All our steps in creating or absorbing material of the record proceed through one of the senses--the tactile when we touch keys, the oral when we speak or listen, the visual when we read. Is it not possible that some day the path may be established more directly?

We know that when the eye sees, all the consequent information is transmitted to the brain by means of electrical vibrations in the channel of the optic nerve. This is an exact analogy with the electrical vibrations which occur in the cable of a television set: they convey the picture from the photocells which see it to the radio transmitter from which it is broadcast. We know further that if we can approach that cable with the proper instruments, we do not need to touch it; we can pick up those vibrations by electrical induction and thus discover and reproduce the scene which is being transmitted, just as a telephone wire may be tapped for its message.

The impulses which flow in the arm nerves of a typist convey to her fingers the translated information which reaches her eye or ear, in order that the fingers may be caused to strike the proper keys. Might not these currents be intercepted, either in the original form in which information is conveyed to the brain, or in the marvelously metamorphosed form in which they then proceed to the hand?

By bone conduction we already introduce sounds into the nerve channels of the deaf in order that they may hear. Is it not possible that we may learn to introduce them without the present cumbersomeness of first transforming electrical vibrations to mechanical ones, which the human mechanism promptly transforms back to the electrical form? With a couple of electrodes on the skull the encephalograph now produces pen-and-ink traces which bear some relation to the electrical phenomena going on in the brain itself. True, the record is unintelligible, except as it points out certain gross misfunctioning of the cerebral mechanism; but who would now place bounds on where such a thing may lead?

In the outside world, all forms of intelligence, whether of sound or sight, have been reduced to the form of varying currents in an electric circuit in order that they may be transmitted. Inside the human frame exactly the same sort of process occurs.

Must we always transform to mechanical movements in order to proceed from one electrical phenomenon to another? It is a suggestive thought, but it hardly warrants prediction without losing touch with reality and immediateness.

Presumably man's spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems. He has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his records more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion and not merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited memory. His excursions may be more enjoyable if he can reacquire the privilege of forgetting the manifold things he does not need to have immediately at hand, with some assurance that he can find them again if they prove important.

The applications of science have built man a well-supplied house, and are teaching him to live healthily therein. They have enabled him to throw masses of people against one another with cruel weapons. They may yet allow him truly to encompass the great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience. He may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record for his true good. Yet, in the application of science to the needs and desires of man, it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which to terminate the process, or to lose hope as to the outcome.

This has not been a scientist's war; it has been a war in which all have had a part. The scientists, burying their old professional competition in the demand of a common cause, have shared greatly and learned much. It has been exhilarating to work in effective partnership. Now, for many, this appears to be approaching an end. What are the scientists to do next?

For the biologists, and particularly for the medical scientists, there can be little indecision, for their war work has hardly required them to leave the old paths. Many indeed have been able to carry on their war research in their familiar peacetime laboratories. Their objectives remain much the same.

It is the physicists who have been thrown most violently off stride, who have left academic pursuits for the making of strange destructive gadgets, who have had to devise new methods for their unanticipated assignments. They have done their part on the devices that made it possible to turn back the enemy. They have worked in combined effort with the physicists of our allies. They have felt within themselves the stir of achievement. They have been part of a great team. Now, as peace approaches, one asks where they will find objectives worthy of their best.

To me this is The author states the expansion of human experience is growing rapidly, but our abilities to navigate this vast wealth of information haven't kept pace. Despite these challenges, hope lies in new technological innovations, including advanced photography, thermionic tubes, and cathode ray tubes, which could prompt a transformation in maintaining scientific records.

The author also discusses the previous hurdles for innovative machines, primarily their complexity and high construction costs, but notes the modern era's ability to build complex, reliable devices economically. Citing examples like the typewriter and the automobile, the author emphasizes this age of accessible, dependable, complex technology is bound to result in significant progress.

He seams marveled by the fact that these technologies work

What a foresight to say when Bush urges scientists, once the war ends, to focus on development of tools which can make accumulated knowledge more accessible, thereby extending the power of the human mind. It show's how he thought of the work he was doing

This is so fascinating I wonder if we could hide modern messages like this.