“As We May Think” by Vaneevar Bush Reading Response

This article was an interesting but also particularly challenging read for me. It took me 3 attempts to read it in it’s whole entirety because my undiagnosed ADHD brain kept needing to re-read the paragraphs as I realize I’m reading yet not understanding a single word this man is writing.

What I found most astonishing was the accuracy in his predictions regarding the future of technology and information. It’s a reminder of how far we’ve come and how our relationship with knowledge and information has transformed dramatically.

His description of the ‘Memex’ machine was also particularly interesting in how he described an apparatus that would be able to store and systematically search a repository of books and articles. In a way, he was describing what we now recognize as the internet and it’s many tools like a search engine and hyper links. The terminologies he chose also serves as a reminder of the time this article was written in. At the time, the digital monitor has yet to be invented so he kept using the word ‘projected’ where we would typically use ‘displayed’ because he can only imagine visual information to be stored in a film like material.

Ultimately this article reminds me to not take the technologies that we have today for granted. It’s almost unfathomable for many of us to imagine a world predating the invention of many devices we use daily in our lives such as our phones, computers, digital cameras, and of course the internet. It’s a great reminder of how powerful and complex these devices are and the countless amounts of research and development efforts made to engineer and mass-produce these technologies.