DARPA vs Memex

Here is the post found on Vice segment, Motherboard: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/darpas-building-a-new-search-engine-to-crawl-the-deep-web

It talks about the United State's Defense Department's (Or DARPA's) new plan to uncover the un-indexed internet in a wholly "new" search engine of its time that more closely relates to Vannevar Bush's "memex" dreams of 60 years ago.

It seems like DARPA has a double motive in creating this search engine. On one hand, it seems to want to just organize the untidy mess that is buried deep underneath search engines like Google today. On the other hand, Neal, the author talks about how through this program, DARPA will be able to get their hands on the more illegal activity occurring on the web. 

The article closing considering the thought that there are potentially many reasons for one to want to be off the grid of the popular internet, and it probably is not just because of illegal activity.


Comparing the memex to the Defense Department's new internet initiative made me realize that the similarities end at the mechanics of it all. The ideas and motives behind the use of the current internet and the memex differ greatly. Although the volume of information and media we have today is similar to what Bush talked about, the reasons for why we use the internet today were not close to being predicted by Vannevar Bush. I do not think the idea ever crossed his mind that such an educational and helpful technology would one day in a new form be extremely commercialized and highly driven by illegal motives. Yes, Vannevar Bush wanted to "index" everything in sight and then link it all together through associative trails, but it was only his intention to link the information that would improve, not destroy humanity. I have a feeling he would omit human trafficking sites or the infamous "Silk Road" of the internet if this was on his mind when writing As We May Think.
I guess what I am getting at is that the "society" that the memex was born into was close to a Utopia, rather than the more realistic society that current approaches of the "memex" must be born into.