A commentary on Vannevar Bush's
As We May Think
By Jules Herr, Greg Phoenix, and Bert Weidt
Humankind has always sought out new and innovative ways of accomplishing tasks that need to be done in ones life. Vannevar Bush was no exception to this instinctive thinking process, and in his article As We May Think, he shows the world what his amazing new ideas are. Written in 1945, As We May Think is a work that can clearly be considered "ahead of its time" in many senses. Historically speaking, Dr. Bush's article parallels the works of other great visionaries such as Leonardo DeVinci and Johan Gutenburg. On the philosophical level, Bush makes insights about human thinking that detail our scientific-evolutionary development, allowing future predictions. Bush displays his great vision for future advances in technology through his descriptions of devices that were built decades after his article was published.
Dr. Bush also brings forth the concept of "hypertext" and how linear information should be transfomed into chunks of information that can all be linked together so that any chunk can be easily accessed. The fact that Bush brings up this idea is especially interesting, seeing that the word "hypertext" was not coined until two decades after As We May Think was written. One might even go to say that As We May Think was the conceptual creation of the World-Wide Web.
This Website is our response to Dr. Bush's As We May Think. As students in Mick Doherty's new Writing to the World-Wide Web Class at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, we will be critiquing Bush's article from various aspects, and will also examine the issue of transferring linear print texts to hypertext. This is what we have to offer on the whole subject......hope you enjoy it.
