Wednesday, June 09, 2010

‘As We May Think’ at 65 « Thinking Out Loud…

A timely hypertext snapshot

It’s 65 years since Vannevar Bush’s visionary paper ‘As We May Think’ was first published in the Atlantic Review; spawning a new field of study and enthusing a generation of computer scientists, writers, and artists. The enthusiasm for the work continues today within many hypertext and hypermedia communities and we are seeing a resurgence of the hypertext ethos in the Web 2.0. Some may think that the ideas and concepts postulated in ‘As We May Think’ are old, tarnished, or without much value. But, it seems to me that the idea of association and its value for augmenting human understanding and cognition continues even today. So what of the man, what of the paper, and why does this work still continue to resonate 65 years after it was first published?

‘As We May Think’ at 65 « Thinking Out Loud…

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